GDPR is coming and many organizations are changing their ways – you must have noticed getting emailed from your favorite […]
Hack
ReadWriteHack is designed to help software, Web and mobile developers learn the key trends, tools, and best practices that shape their work and careers.
These 3 Technologies Will Save Your Business Money
Let’s face it — it’s difficult to keep up with the pace (and price) of new technologies. Business owners face […]
How to Open a Company Bank Account for Your Startup & Avoid the Pitfalls
Congratulations on registering your new business! Or if you’re still contemplating forming your business, and just trying to better understand […]
7 Growth Hacks for Small Businesses and Startups to follow in 2019
Are you looking for some easy and effective growth hacks to boost your budding business? This is a fast-paced environment […]
5 Ways to Buck the Holiday Spending Trends This Year
Every year, predictions about how consumers will spend their money crop up. Covering the most popular toys and the most […]
How To Host A Website With Raspberry Pi
Running your own Web server is the ultimate mark of online independence—and it only need cost you $35.
Building A Raspberry Pi VPN Part One: How And Why To Build A Server
Trust no one and build a server that encrypts your Web data from prying eyes.
4 Unique Growth Tactics for 2020
Marketing tactics change constantly. Each year new tactics become more impactful, and old ones fade into obscurity. Sticking to the same […]
What APIs Are And Why They’re Important
APIs make the modern Web what it is today. Here’s a simple guide to what they are, how they work and why we care.
6 Watermark Apps To Protect Your Online Photos
Photo thieves, beware! Here are the best app options to protect your creative work.
How To Set Up Your Raspberry Pi For The First Time
It’s a computer so simple, anyone can tinker with it. Here’s proof.
Heroku 101: A Beginner’s Guide To Hosting Apps In The Cloud
You build the app, it does the rest.
3 Reasons Why Everyone Needs to Learn Markdown
You’ve probably heard of Markdown. Maybe you’ve heard the name for years. Perhaps you just encountered it, since it’s enjoyed a renaissance lately.
But do you know what it is? Are you using it? You should be. Here are three good reasons to use Markdown. There are no good reasons not to.
Hack of the Day Holiday Special: 3D Christmas Tree in 1KB
Roman Cortes wowed a lot of people with his entry into the “1k Javascript demo contest”: an animated 3D Christmas tree. In just one KB of code.
Cortes has visual guide on how he created it starting with simple pixels to be used as sprites and then animated with 3D vectors.
Seven Ways To Use GitHub That Aren’t Coding
Meet the projects that prove GitHub is a collaboration tool for all stripes.
10 Crazy Things 3D Printers Can Make Today
Never underestimate the power of human ingenuity paired with a machine that can print almost anything.
When Is the Waterfall Methodology Better Than Agile?
Ask any two software developers what the best approach to development is, and you’ll probably get two different answers. Development […]
Five Steps To Build Your Own Random Non-Sequitur Twitter Bot
Make fun of your tweet-obsessed friends—or yourself.
10 Technology Skills That Will No Longer Help You Get A Job
These tech skills are no longer in demand. Show recruiters that you can adapt and learn.
Why You Love Online Quizzes
How many times have you seen an online quiz and thought that it was silly, but took the quiz anyway? […]
Hack of the Day: Upgrading the TinyMCE Emotion Plugin With PHP
TinyMCE is an extremely powerful WYSIWYG editor that is easy to set up. It comes with a good selection of plugins, which were designed to work without the need for server-side scripts, such as PHP.
One plugin I quite like is the Emotion plugin (yes – it’s Emotion rather than Emoticon – I’m trying not to type it the wrong way). However, it’s a…
Day 2: Intel AppUp Elements 2010
Day 2 of Intel AppUp Elements 2010 included topics to help developers make money with apps, promote apps to increase success, and understand the continuously evolving apps ecosystem. Attendees also had access to Blackbelt level developers and Adobe AIR developers.
Let’s take a closer look.
Day 1: Intel AppUp Elements 2010
Day 1 of Intel AppUp Elements 2010 included the keynote followed by intimate talks focused on three core pillars: monetization, fragmentation, and visibility. App developers were presented with the Intel vision of the app marketplace today and the near future.
Let’s take a closer look.
Keeping a Change History: How Logging Can Save You
Keeping a history of changes to your data can be invaluable if something goes wrong. They may also help to analyse the data when things are working well, but you need to know when and how a change occurred.
Here are a few things you should consider including in your application to ensure it’s easy to track changes.
Form Fields: Clearly Identifying the Limits
The question of how big a form field should be isn’t just about how much you can type into the box. It’s also about how it looks, and whether the user understands how much they can type in before they hit the end of the box.
If you’ve ever filled in a form where it’s not obvious how much you can type in, it can become a very frustrating…
Preview: Intel AppUp Elements 2010
What do you get when you fill a room with developers, retro and modern gaming, Wil Wheaton (@wilw), and beverages? If you guessed a time portal to another dimension replete with plasma spewing monsters, adult language, adult situations, deep gamer sub-references and a barely PG-13 rating from the MPAA…. you might be close.
Tomorrow kicks off…
Infochimps Query API is Bananas
You might recall past coverage of Infochimps on ReadWriteWeb. But did you know that Query API access is free to noodle with on the Baboon tier? Let’s explore a bit more and see what a Query API Baboon subscription can monkey with for free.
Don’t worry. The example will be simple so you can go bananas on your own.
Twisted Firestarter: Windows Phone 7 for Developers
Did you know that there are mobile platforms for developers outside of Symbian, Blackberry, iPhone and Android devices? It’s true. They (will eventually) live among us.
A software company located near Redmond has pre-released Windows Phone 7. For those wanting to use the latest hipster acronyms simply refer to Windows Phone 7 as WP7.
So…
Quick Tip: Assume Root Without Changing Directory
This is a tip I found by accident due to hitting a key twice. The result was a bit of a surprise.
If you only need to run a few commands as root, typing sudo before the command will allow you to do this.
However, it’s sometimes useful to assume root so you don’t have to type sudo in front of every command.
Interview with Richard Clark
Today sees our first full interview here at ReadWriteHack, with Richard Clark, a web developer from New Zealand. Richard is a coder who runs a one-man business designing and implementing code, networks and systems for clients at every scale, from tiny silicon valley startups to national corporates and government departments.
He has designed and…
How To: Backup and Restore Your MySQL Database
Backing up your database is absolutely vital if the data is of any importance. This will save you in the event of an accidental deletion, either due to a slip of the finger or a major failure in your code.
If you’re familiar with phpMyAdmin, then you may be able to export and import your database from there. But this approach doesn’t work too well…
PHP5 Alternatives for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
If you use Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS for client projects or for your company you’ve probably stared at the following line: Requirements: PHP 5.2 or better. Yet, when checking back to see what PHP is actually available through the standard yum repos you find… no PHP 5.3 and not even PHP 5.2. Visions of dependencies flash through your…
A Quick Look at ORM for PHP
If you have ever pulled your hair out over maintaining SQL statements intermingled with your PHP project code you might not be alone. Perhaps you considered abstraction or wished your database had an API. You might have even heard of an Object Relational Mapper (ORM).
Let’s take a quick look at ORM for your next PHP project.
Hack of the Day: Using Flot to Display a Graph
Logging statistics is a two-stage process. First, you need to collect the information and store it. Next, you need to expose this information to end users.
It’s quite simple to display a table of stats for users to look at, and this is a good option if you need to provide a detailed breakdown. But for analysing large datasets or simply providing…
Tips For Logging Your Own Statistics
Google Analytics (GA) is a decent service for tracking activity on your site, however, there are times when it may be necessary to log some statistics yourself.
By its nature, GA does not include any information that would allow you to identify who visited a page or clicked a link. Also, GA does not give immediate updates – you have to wait up…
Yahoo’s Yconalyzer and You
You’ve probably read about Facebook and Google providing internally developed tools to the open source world. Often you’ll see references to such tools during conferences or presentations during developer meetups.
One such tool you may not have heard of isn’t from Google and it isn’t from Facebook — it’s from Yahoo. Back in May, Yahoo…
Getting Up and Running Faster with zfKit
You’ve heard about Zend Framework (ZF). You’ve watched the screeencasts. Yet, you haven’t put your toe into the ZF waters. Why? Most likely, you saw it as a lot of work to get started or perhaps you ran into issues with the demo that came packaged with the ZF you installed.
You are not alone. Others had that exact same frustrations and…
Hack of the Day: Stronger Wording by Script or Click
RWH Level: Beginner
When you are writing Web applications it is easy to be terse, obtuse or just plain devoid of reasonable text that conveys what a user is expected to do. Worse, a support page or even the humble README can leave fellow developers wondering what you were thinking or drinking. As with any problem, the solution involves more…
7 Ways to Increase User Participation
Running a site doesn’t only require Web development skills. Any site where the users can add content and communicate with each other requires a great deal of care and attention if it’s going to be a success.
Increasing user participation on your site is achievable if you aim for the old adage KISS, or keep it simple, stupid. Beyond that, there…
Tracking the Buzz in Google Reader During VMworld
The API team over at Google Buzz have been buzzing to say the least. If you recall the long lost Twitter feature known as Track whose disappearance spawned numerous impassioned pleased for return you’ll appreciate the latest from Google Buzz.
Last week the Google Buzz API team updated their blog to announce the general availability for Track as…