Get Semantix - a multilingual semantic mashup

It’s been a little quiet on the blog, because I was busy developing the next version of Semantix — a semantic mashup connecting all major semantic web services that is probably the first semantic service with multi-language support. By analyzing texts, Semantix gives you smart summaries, annotates contents with keywords and categorizes them. And it’s all written in Perl, so it’s uber-cool ;) If you’d like to learn more about Semantix and get an invite to the private beta, continue reading.

The 140 Characters Webapp Challenge Awards!

After the final wrap-up of The Challenge, I gave you 4 weeks to vote. A lot of votes have been casted on different contenders. Big thanks to all who participated! Today I closed the voting and summed up the points. Here are the results.

Final wrap-up of The 140 Characters Webapp Challenge!

The 140 Characters Webapp Challenge is now over! If by chance you don’t know what it was, read this article at Mashable or see the original post at f055. It was great 2 weeks, everybody. You showed some awesome skills, and really raised to The Challenge! Kudos :) And thanks for making it all so exciting for all of us!

I have wrapped up all of your apps into this long, 32 apps list, which all are indeed functional and below 140 chars! (plus 4 that are interesting, but too long) You can VOTE for ONE of your favorite apps. And yes, the voting script is 140 chars too!

Check the VOTING results!

7 days of The 140 Characters Webapp Challenge - wrapped up!

You may have hard of The 140 Characters Webapp Challenge. It made quite a buzz and I’m happy to report that the response was a pleasant surprise to me. Here’s a report from the middle of The Challenge — there’s still a week left!

Some statistics: 19 coders (including me), who have produced 28 webapps in PHP, Perl, Ruby and JS — all but 4 are less than 140 characters of code! Impressive work so far, everybody! Thanks! I managed to wrap up all your work into one list.

The 140 character webapp challenge!

How many interesting webapps can you code in one Twitter message? I have one — a micro-twitter. I want to see many!

Back at Twitter I read this message on 222 character Wikis, by Arun Shroff. I thought — why not — and replied with a challenge: Make a 140 chars webapp in 2 weeks! Whatever language, library or module included, as long as it’s standard. I made an example micro-twitter, described later in the post. If you think you can do better — I dare you. You’ve got 2 weeks again. Post your webapp here in the comments! (complete code, link or anything such that we can see it at its best)

UPDATE! 32 WebApps under 140 Characters — Finale of The Challenge wrapped up!

24 WebApps under 140 Characters — 7 days of The Challenge wrapped up!
Test my example micro-twitter online
Download the micro-twitter source code

5 tips on being smart with HTML and CSS

Remember — always code your site in the most simple and flexible manner. Once you’ve designed and developed your website, and put it online, you can be quite proud of yourself. However, when you come back later to make some changes or improvements, you can discover, to your surprise, that you would spend less time making it all over again, than just updating the current code. Either way, it’s just waste of time and brains. Here are some small tips that may save you lots of time in the future.

Real “nofollow” links using simple JavaScript

Today’s web is all about being in the search engines, i said that before. And since Google is the biggest search engine, I can safely say that today’s web is all about being in Google — which then again all breaks down to having a high PageRank (PR). It’s magically calculated basing on inbound and outbound links to the given site. And often having bad links brings your PR down. That’s why it’s good practice to use nofollow. But I will show you how to make it even more No.

Rounded edges on links with pure CSS

Last time I showed how to make reusable rounded edges on block elements. It was a very effective technique, but it had some HTML overhead. Today, I will show how to make rounded edges on any elements using just CSS. Just like my rounded link highlights. But it can be extended onto list elements, headlines and actually, any other element that can be partially block.

Reusable rounded edges using CSS and HTML

Rounded edges are the trend now, everything has to be smooth and slick — and rounded. There are various techniques to achieve rounded edges. Today, as well as in an upcoming articles, I will describe some that are lazy enough that you should bother using them.

Lazy compatibility

Preparing a website to be compatible (and backward-compatible) with all the different browsers and their versions is a pain. It literally destroys everything you designed and developed, because it often requires changes in the HTML, clutters CSS with new special cases etc. and generally forces you to compromise. I claim this unnecessary — I claim you could spend less time and resources on it (and money) and it would not hurt your image as much as you think.