What I learned from Aza Raskin at FOWA

Aza Raskin – Mozilla – Order from Chaos – Future of the web

People, tabs, and no maps in email? New web app. from Mozilla does this – Ubiquity – See the web the way you want to see it.

Ubiquity is useful for somethings, but basically takes the Google API – maps, translator, etc. to do certain things – putting a google map in an email, translating any text on a website from one language to another, replacing the Google logo with you own text (ex. Amy’s Web Search) and when you go back to google.com it will still be there.

What I learned from Kristina Halvorson at FOWA

Kristina Halvorson – Brain Traffic – Outside the interface: more words to worry about

Designing for content

• Keep a content inventory
• Create a style guide – doesn’t have to be a book – more like an outlined plan
• Track copy as it comes to you – don’t get rid of it because you could use it again.
• Use Wiki for a style guide
• Track what copy is needed when and check it off as it comes in using a Wiki so that everyone involved can participate

Kristina brought up a conversation with Ryan Carson about why there are barely any women doing speeches at these type of web conferences. I think that a lot of women out there in the web world that would speak at a web conference. I don’t know why any of them wouldn’t ask to speak at a conference, but most likely they are just too busy. Carsonified should start asking women to speak. I can think of some right off of the top of my head – iJustine or Gina Bianchini (co-founder and CEO of Ning).

What I learned from Joe Stump at FOWA

Joe Stump – Digg – Scaling your tech team

• Lower barriers – make it easy for people to use code, focus on specialties and specific areas.
• Communicate using tools such as Basecamp and Trac
• Pick your coding standards and conventions and stick with them
• Make sure to use SVN.
• Promote ownership – we are not experts in all areas
• Design using a whiteboard before starting – come up with names and code flow.
• Use a framework – Symfony, cakePHP, etc.
• Do unit and web based testing – Selenium does web based testing
• Document your code (ex. PHP documenter)

What I learned from Ben Galbraith & Dion Almaer at FOWA

Ben Galbraith – Mozilla & Dion Almaer – Google – What is the Future of the Browser?

Dion started ajaxian.com

Ajax and fast web apps. are the future of the browser along with:

• Canvas
• Fast Javascript
• Web Worker
• Desktop Integration – revolutionary technologies

There is a new Firefox web app. in the works called Bespin. It is a experiment they are conducting to build an extensible Web code editor using HTML 5.

What I learned from Jason Fried at FOWA

Future Of Web Apps 2009 – Miami, FL

Jason Fried of 37 Signals – Getting Real 2.0

• Focus more on business models, instead of programming, coding, etc.
• Make money off biproducts (ie. doing stuff on the side) can create more business. 37 Signals extracted Ruby on Rails from Basecamp. Screencasting of something you already do well – video tape how you code, etc. and sell it to people.
• No business should be free – they usually end up getting bought out and then never used again. (eg. iwantsandy.com)
• Share what you know and sell it
• Don’t pay attention to competitors, build your own.
• Before you hire do the job yourself. - Smart but not sure if it would work in all cases.

TWINS!!

I found out I was pregnant with my first child three months ago. I am so excited! My husband and I went to the doctor’s to get our first ultrasound in December. While the ultrasound technician was examining me, she said “not to get you too excited or alarmed, but there are two babies!” I was very shocked, since twins don’t run in either my husbands or my family. Also, I was never on any fertility treatments.

After I thought about all the sleepless nights coming up, I am still very excited and happy that I am having twins! After all, not a lot of people get to experience this and I cannot wait until I do! Of course, I will be blogging about what is going on and how they are doing, so this should be lots of fun!

A follow up to my Coffee post

The previous post I wrote about coffee has changed a bit! I found out I am pregnant, so I quit coffee cold turkey. I know they say you can have up to two cups a day when you are pregnant, but I thought it would be a good time to quit drinking coffee. After reading 10 Reasons To Stop Drinking Coffee, I am glad I did quit drinking coffee, although it was tough at first and I still want to go to Starbucks sometimes! Now only if I could quit my nail chewing habit..