In the past year or so, Modernizr has really exploded on the web development scene. It allows the detection of browser abilities, such as geolocation, canvas, etc. Version 2 also merged with yepnope.js which allows for the conditional loading of CSS & JS. If you don’t know what Modernizr is, their site provides lots of clear documentation to show you its’ power. The one thing that wasn’t clear to me, was if I could load [...]

If you’ve ever needed a high quality lightbox and did some research, I’m sure you’ve come across the jQuery plugin Colorbox. It’s lightweight, themeable with just CSS, and very easy to use. I’ve been using it for a few years now, and have never had a reason to try something else. Anyway, I recently had to open up a Colorbox link from within an iframe, but in the parent window, not the iframe window. Lets [...]

Netflix unleashed a partial redesign this past Wednesday, most notably their entire “Watch Instantly” section, and it’s fairly easy to say that it hasn’t been well received by their user base. As of this writing, there are 3,880 comments on the official blog announcement, and most of them are pretty negative. Now that I’ve had a chance to give the new design and functionality a good test drive, I have to admit that I absolutely [...]

I take computer security fairly seriously. The worst possible computer problem I can imagine is getting my data stolen or destroyed. Bank logins, retirement accounts, thousands of photos & videos, tax returns and other personal information are all sitting on my computer. If my little fortress of data were to be compromised, I would be devastated. On top of that, my wife would probably kill me. So the only thing to do is stay secure. [...]

Finally, the Netflix App for Android is here! Android phone users have waited quite a while for this to happen. I know that personally, I was getting tired of my iPhone using friends bragging about how they had the Netflix App for quite some time now, and I didn’t. We’re even now though! Well, sort of. There some controversy with this App, because it’s release for Android is incredibly limited. If you have one of [...]

I recently had the need to detect some mobile User Agents. If you’re not familiar with the topic, a User Agent is a piece of information that’s in every browser, desktop or mobile, which basically gives some data about it’s vendor and version. So you would be able to tell if a site visitor was using Firefox 4, Internet Explorer 8, or was on an iPhone for example. There are some very robust and complex [...]

I recently wrote about how eBooks are finally a legitimate medium for distributing books, and their statistics are actually making a huge dent in best seller lists. While it may seem that the end is near for traditional paper books, I really don’t see it that way. While eBooks may have some advantages, in many ways, real books will always be superior. What got me started on this train of thought was my recent experience [...]

UPDATE:Unbelievable, Sony announced that ANOTHER 24.7 million accounts were compromised, including 12,700 credit card numbers. This time, all from Sony Online Entertainment servers. — I’m sure everyone has heard the news by now that the PlayStation Network was hacked, and as a result, data from 77 million accounts has been stolen. Yes, 77 million, it’s insane. Don’t worry too much though, only 10 million of those users may have had their credit card information stolen. [...]