Bordertown Labs Blog

After a long day of coding I deployed a sinatra app to appfog and was irked to find that it didn't work in production as it did on localhost. The problem turned out to be that my ajax requests were being cached. The solution is to set cache:false in jQuery's $.ajax options.

What great music for such an entertaining tutorial. CreativeJS for non-coders: Create a particle system in 3 minutes. Here's Seb Lee-Delisle's github.

(via How to Check-In Using the Facebook iOS SDK and Graph API | Tyler White Design)

dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_LOW, 0), ^{ NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://bit.ly/nUX01h"]; NSURLRequest *req = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url]; [NSURLConnection sendAsynchronousRequest:req queue:[NSOperationQueue currentQueue] completionHandler: ^(NSURLResponse *res, NSData *data, NSError *err) { // Convert the data to a UIImage UIImage *image = [UIImage imageWithData:data]; // Scale the image UIImage *thumbImage = nil; CGSize newSize = CGSizeMake(90, (90 / image.size.width) * image.size.height); UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(newSize); [image drawInRect:CGRectMake(0, 0, newSize.width, newSize.height)]; thumbImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext(); UIGraphicsEndImageContext(); dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{ self.imageView.image = thumbImage; }); }]; });

Public Relations for Start-ups The New Rules of Getting Press for Your Start-up Think Facebook and Twitter are all you need to get the word out about your new business? Here are eight more ways to get some media attention.

An overview diagram showing how the Kamra browser has its augmented reality content delivered.

Free e-book © 2010 Richard Szeliski, Microsoft Research

Michael Abrash's classic Graphics Programming Black Book is a compilation of Michael's previous writings on assembly language and graphics programming (including from his "Graphics Programming" column in Dr. Dobb's Journal). Much of the focus of this book is on profiling and code testing, as well as performance optimization. It also explores much of the technology behind the Doom and Quake 3-D games, and 3-D graphics problems such as texture mapping, hidden surface removal, and the like. Thanks to Michael for making this book available.

Here is collection of 3D models in the OBJ format, ready for using as point views in 3DAR.

Future of Local Search The elephants are moving, with Google and Facebook focused on their Places products. And other systemic changes in the environment are driving new behaviors and innovations. Consumers are increasingly turning to mobile devices to organize their lives. Smartphone penetration will reach 50% in 2011, according to Nielsen. Mobile use will center on apps, social media, and favorite services – not on Google. According to Microsoft, 70% of mobile users complete their task within an hour, vs. 30% on the web.

The Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page - Formstack

Building your influence online helps you attain a bigger and stronger web presence, which you can easily leverage to get more customers. Here are the steps: 1. Show up. You can’t start to build your influence online if you aren’t already established where you customers are. Find out where they hang out, and go there. 2. Remember the campfire. You need to start with kindling like tweets and Facebook posts, but don’t let the fire burn out! You have to keep feeding it. 3. Be consistent. If you’re going to show up fully online one week, and then take two weeks off, don’t bother showing up at all.

Building Custom Map Annotation Callouts – Part 1 (via Asynchrony Solutions Blog)

And this brings us back to the philosophical discussion above. If we accept that all Reality happens in our mind and is by definition, Mediated by our senses...then surely any technology that extends our memory, provides additional information, clues, hints or expanded interaction is a form of Augmented Reality. (via Time to review the definition of AR...again - AR UX)

A helpful listing of view dimensions.