Category: Web Development

  • How do you watch your television shows?

    Midway through Heroes: Season 3 I realized how quickly video streaming technology has evolved in the last few years. Think about the multitude of ways you can now get your fix. Regular old TV Digital Video Recorder (DVR): TiVo, MythTV, cable box DVR Hulu YouTube (and other video-sharing sites) NetFlix’s Watch Instantly Networks’ websites (ABC,…

  • Speed Up That Cheap Website with Cheap Amazon S3

    Do you have an economy-grade website host? Me too. BlueHost is great for only $6.95 per month but its response times and transfer rates are terrible. Fear not — Amazon S3 to the rescue. For pennies a day you can supplement your cheap website host using Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3). Amazon S3 is storage…

  • Why I Use 10MinuteMail.com

    Unfortunately, many websites that collect email addresses do so without your best wishes in mind. Case and point: I decided to help meetup.com this evening by clicking on one of their sponsored ads. Because of the way Google AdWords/AdSense works, the ad hoster may not get any revenue unless the user takes a certain action…

  • Easy Way to Convert UTC to Current Timezone in PHP

    $utc_time = “2009-01-12 21:28:21”; // As pulled from the database date_default_timezone_set(“America/New_York”); // Set to Eastern time (automatically handles daylight savings time) // Here’s the secret: add a Z (for zulu) to the end of your UTC date/time string $utc_time .= “Z”; // Now convert to the current timezone $cur_date = strftime(“%G-%m-%d %H:%M:%S”, strtotime($utc_time)); // Format…

  • Presenting Stock Rider :: Ski the Market

    Play Now Today is very special. After 150 hours of hard work and sleepless nights, I have released Stock Rider, a flash-based game where you ski real market data. This is my first big Flash piece and I am so happy with the results. It uses Box2D for Flash as the physics engine, incorporates sounds,…