Straight from me!

It has been a long time since I worked on my project Ping.fm Widget, or even updated my blog for that matter.

However winter break has come upon me and I have found a new motivation to work on it. The new release of the Ping.fm Widget consists of several updates, some of which I’ve been meaning to do for a while. A brief review of the new updated widget reveals a faster, better looking, and better preforming Ping.fm Widget.

First off one of the major updates of mine was to clean out the application’s database used for user account data, as it is starting to get pretty crowded. As a result I will be deleting any account that is not used in the next month. Now this should not be too much of a problem as people can just recreate an account if needed. Also, another was major change the enabling of compression. Now all pages should load a bit faster for you all.

The only really noticeable change would be that of the home page. The home page now has a themed submit button, as well as a better character counter, new ability to switch to posting to blog (making the title box appear).

The only down side about this new look is that I have somehow broke the recent updates function, now it is displaying the same error as custom triggers (when I tried adding it during my session of coding)

Now there are more changes that have happened and there still will be more coming. There are many ideas I wish to implement. However since the year is coming to a close I find it fitting to show how far the widget truly has come.

Old Interface:

New Interface:

As you can see the widget has come a long way , however there is still a lot more I will be adding in the future.

Here is a sneak preview:

- Geolocation Support

- Custom Triggers Support (Thats a big one that I need to get working)

- Photo Support (Got it partially working on some alpha releases, it may even include pixelpipe support)

- Ability to use other shortening url services (other than ping.fm’s automatic shortening through posting)

- More Platforms

…. and much more!!!

Lastly  user will now be able to start to create their own themes for the widget. There will be two options:

1. Developer Themes

Theses will be themes that are created by a developer and just consists of modifications of a css file. After a developer modifies this css file and is satisfied, they may submit their theme for review. If accepted the theme will be available to all users of the app, and credit will be given to theme author (under my copyright link) on pages that are using that theme. So if a user switches to a developer’s theme credit will start showing under the copyright data for that user until the user changes their theme selection.

2. User Customization

Just as you can easily customize your twitter page by selecting colors, you will be able to select colors for different items and save them. Allowing you to customize the app’s appearance to your preference.

Now the downside to both of these is I am not finished completely with implementing both of these things. At this time user customization is unavailable to normal users, but developers may email me or use the feedback page under more in the widget to contact me to get a CSS template to use for designing. They may then email their design back to me for review and incorporation. Once I am down I will just have a page where the CSS may be downloaded and new themes may be uploaded for review.

Now I can’t get to all of the new changes in the Ping.fm Widget but you may go check it out for yourself. To make an account visit http://pingwidget.com or if you already have an account but need to just simply re-download the app visit here (Don’t worry I will clean up all those pages next , and make them look pretty as well). I hope that the Ping.fm Widget is of continued good use.

You may comment below, or use the new feedback page in the widget under more to provide me with ideas, comment or problems with the widget.

You may also follow me on twitter: @gamers600

All the input I get will be all read and responded to so your ideas will likely be included (and very fast).

Early Happy New Year and a late Happy Holidays to all those using the Ping.fm Widgets!!!!!!!

- Anthony

me@anthonykosednar.com

New stuff is coming soon!!

Yep the free version addition came out to today!

So check it out here and remember to update!

Ok normally for me cox is slow and it but lately its been pretty good!!  Hope it stays like this! Thanks cox for obviously doing something right for right now at least!

One of the the reasons why I use jailbroken firmware is the ability to run multiple apps at a time, in fact this is one of the most wanted features of iphone lovers right now. As a result ocean observations decided to figure out what they think the iphone would look like if it had multitasking (watch the video by clicking the thumbnail below)

Apple original came out saying to us that it doesn’t have to implement a task manager in its phone and they would not be adding multitasking as it would suck the memory of the iphone.

This I think will not happen in the end, however. In this current world that we live in, people are multitasking everywhere. A business executive all the way down to an equally busy mom are multitasking here and there. As a result I think apple will be for to allow more multitasking abilities (than badge notifications and such) and more fluid, useful ways of running multiple apps (once they actually allow it).

Take note here apple, you added spotlight, and now we want expose too!

One thing that I get asked when people see my computer is why is my dock on the left of my screen and not on the bottom as it is by default? Well there are several reasons for this but the main reason is screen real estate. I like surfing the web  and using the most of my screen as I can. I also do not like scrolling down pages too often, and with the dock down at the bottom I find myself scrolling a lot more often as my web browsing windows are not as big. As a result of all of this I find a small dock off to the left perfect for me.

Yep I’m going to start blogging again I will try to get posts out when ever I can. I will try but can’t promise a whole lot!

Happy Mothers Day to all you moms out there! Thanks for putting up with us kids!

The no password bug for new users who register for Ping Widget has been fixed! The problem was the name field wasn’t named. If your password isn’t recorded though, please reply to your password reset email.

Since I last visited Jamlegend huge improvements have been made on it! Theses improvements include some interface changes and some new features. So check it out by visiting a www.jamlegend.com