| | Page 2

And another one

By SeanHills | January 13, 2009

Another Innocent young man

Another young man killed for absolutely no reason. If you haven’t heard a young man Oscar Grant in Oakland, California was killed (executed) on New Years Day by an officer.

Grant and some friends got into a fight on the train which obviously led the BART officer to handcuff them. What doesn’t make sense is the fact that minutes later he was shot execution style. He was handcuffed and on the platform while getting shot by this officer.

Thanks to a girl on a passing train who recorded the whole act on her cell phone, we can all see what exactly happened on YouTube and even news networks.

The excuse used by the officer and the department is that the Bart officer mistaken his gun for his tazer. Sometimes I think that the public is so dumbed down that we star to just assume right in every single person even if it is right in front of us. As much as I hate violence I am glad they are protests and riots going on in Oakland because things like that cannot go on anymore.

This isn’t based on race, this is based on rights. There was no reason to pull out the tazer from my eyes because the young man had three officers on him, what more can he possibly do?. I have heard of too many people being killed by Tazer guns this whole summer so I don’t think that’s even a save way to calm someone down. How in the world are you going to explain to his parents and his family that your son has died due to mistaken weapon identity?

In this day and age Officers have way too many rights and reasons to fire a gun and in this event there was absolutely no cause for it. Sometimes important news like this gets lost and for simple reasons like news on the other coast didnt report it and etc. I hope all of you take this problem seriously as we did Sean Bell and many more in the future. I haven’t heard a peep from any politicians on this and not even Barack, but thats another story. What do you guys think fo all this?

Posted in Life, Media News | Tagged crime, death, shot, tazer | 1 Comment

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

What I’m Reading Today 12/09/2008

By SeanHills | December 10, 2008

Google gives Gmail users a to-do list
As much as this seems like a pretty cool idea to jump on the task list bandwagon I don’t think this will go anywhere. It’s a light weight feature and there are so many task list applications and websites that tie with the mobile devices no one will care enough to try to use this. I have tried Zenbe with Zenbe lists on my iPhone and it works great and there is others. I can only see this being useful if Google themselves release a iPhone applications that automatically syncs with the online version and calendar then that opens up the doors to competition since almost everyone has a gmail account.
Turning the iPod Touch into a Mobile Phone

I think that it is amazing how companies are pushing applications on the iPhone and I guess this also shows that the iPhone dominance is here to stay because I don’t think any other device will bring this much excitement to the application world. That being said if you have an iPod Touch check the TruPhone application out, it uses VOIP for calls and users can chat with gtalk users also. The company is trying to add support for landline calls and I cannot wait for that. This would be cool if t evolves into a way that a person can use the iPod Touch as a mobile phone or maybe apple will just shut it down if it goes that far.
Delicious goes mobile finally

It’s about time you guys! Out of all web 2.0 apps Delicious should have been mobile since th ebegining. And now since the iPhone has a huge share in the market I’m sure many iPhone users have wanted to have their bookmarks better optimized for their phone. Next up should be a native application, which would be extremely useful.

Posted in Media News, Web | Tagged Google, iPhone, Mac, mobile, social, Web, Web Ware | Leave a comment

Voice enabled Search engine? & more stuff white people like

By SeanHills | October 7, 2008

iPhone app lets you search the Web with your mouth ?

A quick overview from the folks from webware about a new iphone application that uses your voice to search the web. Honestly what is the purpose of this ? Do I really need to use this at all, like things can sound cool, but please make them useful.

#111 Pea Coats « Stuff White People Like

I find this website hilarious due to the fact that most of its mentioned “stuff” are accurate. I think this writer is always on point and is a good read lol. I wonder if someone can create a website called stuff black people like without it being taken as offensive?

Posted in Media News, Web | Tagged application, Blog, information, iPhone, peacoats, social web, stuff, web2.0, white people | Leave a comment

Flickr’s finally on board & Chat Adium style on Windows!

By SeanHills | October 3, 2008

Flickr’s iphone mobile site (Finally)

It’s about damn time! I mean out of all companies that should have a mobile website for the iphone it would be Flickr. You can still upload images with their email uploading system, but there is still no excuse a native application is a must especially after companies like Facebook have made great ones for social networking. Anyway webware talks about the new redesign and brings up some great points himself so check it out for yourself.
Digsby = IM + Email + Social Networks

For all you windows users who need an all purpose chat application THIS IS A MUST! I know plenty of people who are jeleous of Adium for year, but no more so enjoy and download now.

Posted in Media News | Tagged chat, email, iphone flickr, networking, redesign, social, software, Web, web2.0, windows | Leave a comment

A Few of my Favorite things PT 2!

By SeanHills | October 3, 2008

If you don’t know me well by now I am the person who is alwasy trying out new things even when everyone else is using the norm or so call best. So here I will just list some webware and software products that in my eye are worth the shot.

OPERA 9.5 – I have for the past two years been using camino web browser instead of firefox for mac because of it’s sluggish ways, which is very annoying and can make a user unproductive. After a while I just wanted more choices in my web browser and more spead since I average 25 plus tabs a day. So I started using Opera 9.5 and surprisingly it has out performed all of those browsers in speed and memory usage, which are important to me.
Opera Web Broswer 9.5

A lot of people have just bypassed Opera but with this new version there is no way I am going back to firefox at this time. It’s new interface, updated email client, custom rendering engine and it’s amazing Opera Link, that syncs your bookmarks and Speed Dial between your computers and mobile phone are built in and just make using it great. There are plenty other items tied in with the browser like better fraud protection, but Ill let you check it out for yourself.

OPERA MINI 9.5

If you are going to use Opera 9.5 on the computer using it on the cell is a must. Opera mini is the best web browser on the mobile phone and I think will continue being so because of its innovation and anyone with less fancy cellphones and even blackberys can enjoy full websites on their mobile device so check it out.

Clicky Web Aanalyics – One day I was getting annoyed with google analytics lack of live updates to its web stats. To me I just wanted to see the habits of the users in real time and maybe even get organization names and get something extra about my future client, employer etc. I stumbled upon a blog discussing several sites that are better than google analytics and I was amazed right away. Here is a list of thing sthat are offered by Clicky.

Track outbound links
Track downloads
Bounce rates
Visitor organizations (e.g. Microsoft Corp)
Visitor hostnames (e.g. comcast.net)
Most active visitors
Track custom data for every visitor (usernames, cookies, etc)
Email reports
IP tags
Real time data
Widgets of Mass Deliciousness to put on your web site
Get your stats via RSS feeds
View popular data in a TagCloud instead of boring tables and charts
Aggregate (multi-day) view for all data
Data export to CSV, XML, and JSON
Spy (a live view of your web site)
Works with visitors who have disabled JavaScript
White label as your own product
Official WordPress plugin for easy integration with your blog
FeedBurner RSS stats integration
Google Maps integration
Clean, modern interface
Public statistics
Updated constantly
Free service
Insanely affordable premium service
(starting at less than $2/month) n/a
Affiliate program to earn you cash or free premium service

There are more products to come! I figured I would start off with a quick post, but it ended up long so I will make daily updates about new products you might be interested in so keep an eye out.

Posted in Media News, Web | Tagged analytics, browser, clicky, Opera, operamini, stats, Web, Web 2.0 | Leave a comment

New Pastures

By SeanHills | October 2, 2008

What’s good people? I know I haven’t been bogging as much, but as you guys know with me relocating in June I have been on the grind trying to get interviews, contacts and redesigning my website. When I came to Austin I promised myself that my next job would be for me and only me and no settling by any means. After a long battle I have been hired to work at Charles Schwab as a Web Producer. This is a different role as me being a Web Designer for the past two years I have been more hands on with designing and hard coding. With my new position those skills will be used, but not as much and I will be working more with CMS, maintaining the websites content, side projects and etc.

I love this position because I get to bring up new concepts and Ideas when I see fit and my opinion is being listened too for once! To me this position is a stepping stone in developing my career as one of the elite Tech/Web minds. More and more I grow I know my place in the industry lies within developing a companies Tech and web presence to help clients, sales and etc.

Other than that my coworkers are great so far and Austin is definitely my home for now and wouldn’t change it for the world. The weather down here around this time is so crazy I forget that we are in October at all. I don’t think I have ever just been at peace in NYC as I have been here. So all of you guys definitely need to come visit soon maybe even come for SXSW! Well till next time.

Posted in Life, Web | Tagged Career, Jobs, Life, Producer, SXSW, Tech, Web | Leave a comment

Ping & Pandora

By SeanHills | October 1, 2008

Ping.fm / Blog

pretty cool stuff if you want an all purpose social application updater.
Pandora to Congress: Vote now, we’re running out of time | The Social – CNET News

It sucks to lose a great service such as Pandora, but I doubt they should be a main reason to sign a bill come on ! Sometimes I just wish companies and people would think before they make statements especially in a time like these.

Posted in Media News, Web | Tagged 2.0 online, Blog, cnet.com, market crash, networking, Pandora, ping.fm, service radio, social web, Web Ware | Leave a comment

Browser Talk

By SeanHills | September 8, 2008

As you heard or read a million times already Google has developed it’s own browser dubbed “Google Chrome“. Everyone seems to think this is the best thing since slice bread but it isn’t by far. It looks decent with its simple design and UI and was pretty fast when I tried it, but of course its only a beta version and the first one at that. Unless they plan to just continue to call it Beta like Gmail for the next 4 years. I still don’t see anything to go crazy over. It is built with webkit and it does add it’s own browser efficiency with how each tab uses their own sources, but it borrows from every browser that is already out. It takes Opera’s Speed Dial feature, address bar beneath tabs instead of above and from what I noticed Opera controls each tab slightly similar with it’s edit site preference pane. Then you will notice it also includes the so called “Awesome bar” used by Firefox and Opera, which gives the user the ability to type a simple phrase in the address bar to get to an old website without going through their history.

I just don’t get the hype! I personally fear that google will track it’s browser users and dish out the info to their advertising partners because obviously they want you to stay online longer to make money off you. It’s understandable, but way too much power for one company. Also, do you really think people are going to stop using Internet Explorer ? As much as I hate the thing I highly doubt people will stop using it. The average person is lazy and automatically uses what’s available to them, which in most cases is IE. My generation is getting smarter, but its the older folks who are just using what they have been for the last 10 years.

Google I am also hearing way too many complaints about your browser crashing and etc, which you said it wouldn’t so get it together. If you guys and I mean every huge web company want to make the web a better place and competitve how about you improve your browser standards. Internet Explorer has always been on their own thing for so long they don’t care what users want nor care what the general public think. They have this dumb ass feature in Internet Explorer 8 that is basically a standards mode. A standards mode? why the hell would you give a user a choice? If we are to improve the web all the neccesary web standards should be the default of the browser and thats it. You see if all of these web browsers supported these standard functions and etc then it will make the playing feild even for all companies and browsers.

No one should have to be subjected to seeing messages stating ” WE DO NOT SUPPORT YOUR BROWSER DOWNLOAD THIS”. And not only do the web browser companies have to improve on this it also falls on web developers, designers, web content publishers and so forth.

Posted in Media News, Web | Tagged Fire Fox, Google Chrome, Opera, Web 2.0, Web Browsers, Web Standards | Leave a comment

Re Design

By SeanHills | August 27, 2008

So if you haven’t noticed yet, I have redesigned my blog and portfolio site yesterday night. This took a week and 2 days to get the design and structure down. Also, I am still working my blog with this new word press theme framework so new features will be added. I decided to do what most designers don’t have the time to because they are mostly busy with their jobs and etc. I focused my new design towards keeping my same color concepts and bringing the signature logo to light.

Before and After shot 1

After paying attention to the usage on my website stats and seeing how people view my portfolios and etc. I made it a little easier and simple to view these items that are important for the viewer to see. On my previous portfolio design I noticed a person viewing the site will just click on the top two links and mostly never scroll down to see the rest of the work. I figured the problem was the fact that the design descriptions were making the page too long. Now when viewing my web portfolio I have added more projects and also added some cool javascript effects to display each piece full screen and have the description within that screen, therefore making the page shorter.