Entrepreneur Geek

Adobe AIR 2.0 Beta out – list of new features

Adobe released a beta of the next version of AIR – AIR 2. Christian Cantrell posted an exhaustive list of everything that’s new in AIR 2.0. The list is impressive, and includes some things we’ve been thinking about – audio recording, calling native apps, multi touch and many more. The number of AIR applications on my computer is rising, and looking at this list, I can tell the number is just going higher.

Are you an AIR developer? What do you like the most in that feature list?

Microsoft too can build good UI – here’s a “sixth sensy” demo

So everyone who’s worth their salt is working on gestures and eye tracking and other – more natural – ways of interacting with a computer. Two interesting videos here that demonstrate pen, audio, gesture and eye tracking input. Good show Microsoft, I say.

Craig Mundie demonstrates future UI – part 1 and part 2.

Did you fall in love with the slider toggle button on iPhone? Now you can use if in Flex

Srinivas Annam has built an iPhone style switch component for Flex – iCheckbox. Looks nice and is worth a try. I am sure users find it easier to use than a checkbox.

Remember Passwords, Not Usernames

“Remember Me” options typically remember both username and passwords. Some sites remember your username and ask you to enter the password every time you login.

I saw that Plesk control panel remembers your password and asks you to enter the username.

That’s a really smart trick. It’s much easier for me to remember my username than my password. Someone who gets access to the computer will have to know my username to get in. It’s a good enough protection I think!

Anyone else on this? What do you think? Should we remember passwords or usernames?

Compare multiple browsers side by side - Adobe BrowserLabs

Web designers and developers are always challenged by the diversity of browsers (each with its own quirks). It’s generally a time consuming and error prone process. Requires someone with a skilled eye to spot the problems.

Now, Adobe has simplified that process with BrowserLabs. You can see multiple browsers side by side, and can even overlay them to quickly spot differences. It’s free now and worth a try. Check it out.

I am using Text_Diff classes of PHP to generate differences between two XML documents. The output is not always valid XML – tag nesting is not always correct. This happens because my source files are XML and have their own tags. When Text_Diff inserts its own <ins> and <del> tags around the changed text, it messes up the tag hierarchy at times.

I am looking for a clean, fast and safe way to fix such invalid XML. Do you have any recommendations?

I have looked at Tidy, it’s PHP library and htmLawed. I liked htmLawed since it’s pure PHP implementation, but don’t know how fast it is compared to Tidy. Moreover, I need an XML cleaner, not necessarily XHTML cleaner. So even if I use these libraries, I will have to strip out the HTML parts from the output.

Do you have any suggestions / recommendations?

I have trained my eyes to skip all ads on a web page. But today, I saw something I had to click!

Live Scribe is a pen, an audio recorder and much beyond that. It records everything you write, scribble and draw. Along with audio. You can then play it back from anywhere. You can even search what you wrote and share your recordings / notes with others. It’s amazing!

Live Scribe Pulse Smart Pen

This is a great tool for students, journalists and anyone who would like to record everything from a meeting. Even great for brainstorming sessions!

The 2GB pen is $199, 1GB is $149. A refill costs $5.95.

Would make a nice gift, isn’t it?

What say?