endtwist

Improvements always welcomed :)

So, these three companies are trying to prevent people from switching entirely to Verizon because they already have/are considering Verizon's wireless service. Or something to that effect.

(Note: I'm from the NY Metro area, so I've kept an eye on all these companies offerings the past few years.)

I normally wouldn't have too big of a problem with that, except that I don't believe he's actually hired or paid a single individual to work on "freezecrowd," ever.

You could argue that many aspects of life are and always have been games; I think fnid2 has a valid point.

Even if you can't see more than the 3 boxes on the page, you have a scroll bar and a large, softly pulsating link that says "Sign up now, it's free ↴". And if you don't scroll down, all of the navigation is right there at the top anyway.

I'm glad they ignored the fold, and I think all designers should aspire to this level of quality and attention to detail in their own work.

To those less informed on the whole situation: The simple fact is that Flash isn't going anywhere for a long time, but at the same time, implementation of HTML 5's features is quickly going to become far more pervasive (we're already starting to see this). You, of course, have people from both extremes arguing both sides ("Flash is dead!"; "HTML5 will never get anywhere!"), but if you're really listening to just these opinions, you're only going to get a very polarized view of the situation.

Sit down, read the HTML 5 specs, keep up with the latest HTML 5, Flash, and major browser updates, and you'll get a better picture of the situation. Listening to people like this Radley Marx really does not give you an informed or balanced view of the whole situation.

I've only found three or four false positives in the five and a half years I've been with GMail.

Now, I'm not saying you're unqualified or wrong to make that claim — I merely would like to know what you're basing that statement upon. I see a lot of people make statements like this one based on a few prominent data points, completely ignoring the vast number of data points that don't fit their claim. It seems wrong, especially for a community so hell-bent on accurate, useful data.

At the same time though, support for WebSockets in major browsers is woefully little, with only Chrome currently supporting it in an active "release," and (I believe) support available in the Firefox trunk for a later version. This still doesn't account for Safari or Internet Explorer, the latter being the biggest impediment to adoption.

Additionally, I certainly don't think this is the beginning of the end for "AJAX" — not in the least. AJAX still has very strong grounds in pulling down data from the server that doesn't require some sort of long-running communication.

Yes, let's get excited, but a little bit of a sanity check should be done if you're ready to call AJAX "dead" (or "dying").

It supports text selection, requires zero thought once it's set up, and works in every major browser. The only major downside is that you need to convert each font to typeface.js' JSON font format, which adds a bit of heft.

At the same time of course, I definitely support what Typekit is trying to do, since most font foundries won't be happy with (m)any other solutions. Too bad this discounted pricing won't last!

Edit: Also, you should put an email address in your profile.

Some may argue that it isn't efficient enough, though.

Ajax IM website: http://www.ajaxim.com

Ajax IM demo: http://www.ajaxim.net

Edit: except, I just remembered that jetBlue doesn't serve St. Louis (my "base"). Damn!

If another service flops in the next few months, then yes I agree, the house of cards is collapsing, but right now that statement is a little premature.

http://reaktivo.com/mt/mooswitch/index.php

Relational databases, such as MySQL and PostgreSQL, are great for some things -- especially when you need to (put simply) divide and recombine various pieces of information easily. JOINs. UNIONs, etc. are fantastic when you need them, and it's where relational databases excel.

On the other side of the equation are hash and "document" databases, which are mostly key-value stores with some unique functionality (e.g. the indexing feature of Tokyo Cabinet Tables). These are great when you need to store a large volume of data, but don't need to frequently recombine the stored data in many different ways. You can run simple queries with some hash DBs and retrieve specific data, by key, at the drop of a hat; this is where (for the most part) key-value stores win out over relational databases.

It is clear, at least to me, that these two classes of DB serve two different purposes, with some overlap. By that logic, I see no reason why they can't happily co-exist in a single project. In fact, I'm using multiple database formats in a single application without any problem. Sure, there is a little more management and some extra logistics involved, but the point is that each type of database is used with its strengths in mind.

I'm not going to force MySQL to be a giant hash table when something else will do the job better, and I'm not going to force Tokyo Tyrant to try and be a relational database (not that I really could).

Am I wrong in finding a happy medium between multiple technologies?