Hey! I re-skinned the linkjoin website. Orange was such a bad idea. It started out with a little splash of orange and by the time I put all the stuff into the site that I wanted, it was a mess of large, unwieldy shades of orange and yellow. And, while orange can definitely be fun, it wasn’t the right fit for linkjoin. In the process of re-skinning the website, a new color was born! Green. Green is an amazingly awesome color and now the demographics charts (as well as some other focus areas) have green in them for some extra visual oomph. Check it out: I also made the pie chart “slices” sort of pop out, because that’s fun and, as the creator and developer, I get to do whatever I want to it.

We’ve given linkjoin a few upgrades in the last week. Since hyperlink submission and tracking was managed solely on a per-computer basis, members have requested registration/login capabilities to enable them to view their hyperlinks and tracking information from multiple computers. This is now a possibility.

As well as being able to use linkjoin as a completely anonymous user, users can also register for free and no matter where they log in from, they will be able to manage their data.

We’ve also added demographics data!! Now, in addition to being able to see which links are most popular and when users click on them, users can also view which browsers and referring websites are most popular. The image above is an example of my personal linkjoin account.

Click here to try it out yourself.. IT’S FREE!

I was seriously considering using Clear High Speed Home Internet because it’s an amazing deal, in my opinion, for the average internet user. If you’re not doing activities that heavily rely on an internet connection (for example: surfing Facebook, talking to your friends, looking things up online), then Clear is definitely the way to go.

The problem: Like back when I tried to sign up for Verizon FiOS, Clear doesn’t offer service in most locations. While Clear may offer their Mobile Internet service across the nation, they can’t offer their Home Internet service in a lot of places. I live in the outskirts of Chicago and – even though their website coverage says Chicago – I plugged my address into their coverage checker and no dice.

I would have really loved paying $25/mo for home internet from Clear, rather than paying $60+/mo for home internet from Comcast. And to be perfectly honest, my router never works in the first place so I end up having to “borrow” the internet from someone else anyway.

Oh well. I’m sorry to have to say this, Clear, but if you had more coverage, I would switch to your service. Or, if you had a “Cellphone and Mobile Internet” plan, I would definitely make the switch.

Alas, you don’t. But hey, feel free to check out Clear’s website and plans. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.

I would like to thank Ryan (of rynotec.com) for bringing a small, yet hindering bug to my attention regarding the Pseudo-Captcha tutorial. It seems that I had accidentally typed a “Q” in the “W” spot on the character image that is read by end-users to prove that they are human.

He had implemented the Pseudo-Captcha script into a website that he was developing and the verification kept failing. He took a quick look at the character image and to his surprise (and mine), it had two Q’s in it. Needless to say, I am ashamed. How this travesty could have happened, I do not know. I must be slipping in my old age. I apologize. :)

Regardless, the tutorial and downloads are fixed and there is no need to worry.

It’s amazing what you can program with four decent hours. This module is called AS3 Twitter Feed and it was developed for the company that I work for. It’s basically an improved version of the AJAX Twitter Feed module that was on this website before, which has since been replaced with this one. This module is powered, as most of my modules are, by ActionScript, PHP and XML. It’s also resizable and completely skinnable including the color scheme (by changing the skin’s XML values or using a built-in color scheme), a custom avatar (or leave the setting blank to use your current Twitter avatar) and a custom “Follow Me” image (I used a stupid blue bird holding a sign). Cliche, I know.

This module isn’t available to the public yet, but it should be soon. I’m still waiting on some technical things to get worked out before I can release it.

If you want to check it out, just look at the lower-left section of this site. Thanks!

Recently, I’ve decided to revamp some of our proprietary products at work. Some of the products that I’ve been wanting to update for a while now are: the outward-facing BHI Marketing Tools website, our Rotating Banner (written in AS3) and our FLV Player (also written in AS3).

We’ve been wanting to redesign our business website, BHI Design, ever since I started working here. But let’s be honest – that isn’t going to happen anytime soon. So! Out of boredom – and a lack of anything better to do – I redesigned our sister website, BHI Marketing Tools, a website that I started about two years ago as an additional revenue source. The new design is fully implemented and includes features that we really needed for a while. Some of the features include: our parent business’ contact information, a little auto-biography about the company and what we do, a completely different approach to our previous implementation of AJAX Forms (client login, feedback, etc), our featured projects, links to our Twitter and Facebook accounts and a way for visitors to join our electronic newsletter list.

I really like the new layout and I think it conveys our message to visitors better than the previous version. We still have to migrate the application interface (what our clients see) to reflect the homepage a little better, but that isn’t very important at the moment.

I’ve also rewritten two of our smaller projects: FLV Player [AS3] and Rotating Banner [AS3]. As many of you can probably imagine, FLV Player is a simple video player that can stream any FLV file to your website. It supports any length of video and has been tested up to resolutions of 1280×720. There isn’t a fullscreen mode yet, but it will definitely be added to any future releases if we get a request for it. The Rotating Banner is pretty self-explanatory. You load the SWF onto your website and point it to an XML file containing image URLs, hyperlinks, transition type, etc. Both of these projects can be seen in action on the BHI Marketing Tools website. (I know it seems like I’m trying to promote the crap out of that website, but it’s where most of my projects end up being used).

So, check them out. Let me know if you like them. If you have any questions or comments, please post them. Thanks!