I recently stumbled across a pretty useful tool for mysql DB design.  It’s called DBDesigner 4 by fabFORCE.  I’ve found it to be a pretty useful tool for visually designing my databases, establishing relationships within said databases, and exporting the SQL.

Now I am aware that there is a successor to DBDesigner 4 by Sun Microsystems called MySQL Workbench, but I have yet to give it a shot.  Perhaps in the coming days I’ll give that a try and update this post.  For the time being, I thought I would share this tool with the world.

Here is why Genius is the perfect feature for Apple to release at this time

Apple is great at following the trends of their customers.  The iPod, despite not being the first mp3 player, really did revolutionize the way people listened to music.  As they saw their users becoming interested in videos and podcasts, they shifted and adjusted their products and software. It’s what they do.  One trend that has developed since the dawn of the iPod and iTunes is that people’s music libraries have grown and grown.  Many users have gigs and gigs of music.  I’ve heard people brag about how many days [or even weeks] worth of music they have in their collection.  This is a good thing, dot get me wrong.  I’m a proponent of people loving and having tons of music, but it presents a problem. You cant want to listen to every type of music at the same type.  Shuffle becomes useless.

How do you organize all of this music so that you can hear what you want when you want?

Well users are inherently lazy.  Some users will create playlists, some will organize their music meticulously and have only their favorite files prepared for playback, but most users will shuffle their iPods and constantly skip the sings they don’t like.  I, not too long ago, removed near 80% of my music from my library to stop hearing the songs I like but don’t want to hear all the time from popping up when I put my iPod or iTunes on shuffle.

Apple’s Genius solves this problem beautifully.

By combining the data they have mined from the mp3 sales in their music store and the data you have provided in you library they can dynamically generate a playlist of your own music that matches the style, tone, and feel of a song you select.  Think of it as Pandora with your own music library.

This means that users can have the playlist they need with minimal work.  Now you don’t have to feel like you need to limit your library because you know you can always get that perfect playlist at the click of a button.

Genius.

UPDATE:  I’d like to add that not only did they solve this problem, but they did it in a way the places ads for new songs in front of your eyes.  Very clever Steve.

A List Apart, for the second year in a row, is giving a survey to find out what really is the current state of affairs in the web development industry.

If you are a web developer, please go and fill out this survey! The information gathered in this survey will greatly benefit all web developers in the future.  There are some really interesting facts produced by these surveys, including information related to salaries, benefits, and working conditions.  By assessing the current trends in these areas, we can set the bar for our future salaries, benefits, and working conditions.  This is a really great initiative they are taking.

Or you can check out last years results here.

I have not forgot about you guys.  There are more updates on the way.  I have been working on some great new tutorials covering everything from sIFR to SEO.  I want these tutorials to be of the highest quality so I am taking my time.

In the meantime, Opera has put out a course curriculum focusing on web standards.  Excellent excellent excellent resource.  Thoroughly covers the ins and outs of coding web pages according to the standards set forth by the world wide web consortium (w3c). Definitely check it out whether you are a seasoned professional or just starting out.

One of the most crucial components of being a web developer is constant education.  Every web developer should constantly be reading blogs about the industry just to keep up in this fast paced environment.  Of course blogs shouldn’t be your only source of information. You should also be reading books and magazines, experimenting with new techniques, attending conferences, etc., but blogs are most definitely an important source.  I have compiled a list of my top 5 favorite web development blogs because, lord knows, there are a lot, and it can be difficult to sort through them all.

A List Apart

An excellent blog written by some of the greatest minds in the web development industry.  The topics covered on this site range from web standards to tutorials to industry trends, and every entry is top notch quality.

Think Vitamin

Think vitamin is a blog run by Carsonified [the same people that bring you fowa, fowd, and their new app matt].  I’ve always thought this blog was similar to A List Apart only shifted slight toward business and entrepreneurship.

Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine really puts it all together and provides excellent content for developers.  They update often with tons of tutorials, freebies, tips.

NETTUTS

More of a tutorial site than anything else but great none-the-less.  NETTUTS is an amazing site by eden, the creators of PSDTUTS and Freelance Switch.  They produce high quality tutorials for web development.

Wakeuplater

And let’s bring it home with wake up later.  Wakeuplater is a blog solely dedicated to the freelance web developer.  Wakeuplater has some real excellent entries and resources for the freelance web developer and pretty much any freelancer regardless of industry.

These are my favorites.  There certainly are other great web development resources, and I am always interested in finding new ones so please post your favorites in the comments.

Are you building a web app or working on a blog or website and you need a beautiful way to display data? As usual, Google is here to help - for free.  Google has built a very easy to use API for creating charts and adding them to your website on the fly. Here is a simple guide for how to use the API to create a pie chart.

For eample, let’s use Google Charts to display the results of a poll. Here is some sample data.

Whats your favorite computer manufacturer?

Company	Percentage
Dell	40%
Apple	15%
Sony	7%
IBM	8%
HP	10%
Toshiba	20%

How did I do it?

It is simply an image that is generated on the fly by Google. With just a few commands in the src attribute.

Explanation

First things first, creat and image tag.
<img src="" alt="">
Then, give the image and appropriate alt attribute. This is important to include so that if the viewer has any issues downloading or viewing the image they will atleast have a short description of the image. Also screen readers and web crawlers will be able to interpret the content of the image. In fact an even more descriptive alt is warranted, but for the sake of this tutorial “Sample Chart” will do.
So now our image tag looks like this:
<img src="" alt="Sample Chart">
Next, we want to connect to the Google Charts API. We do this by adding the image source attribute.
<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/" alt="Sample Chart">
Now that we are connected to the Google Charts API, we need to tell Google what type of chart we would like them to produce for us. To do this we will add:
chart?cht=p3
We will also need to add a chart size parameter. Which, in this case, would look something like this:
&chs=300x100
Lastly, we’ll need to add some chart data. Here is the code we will add to complete this chart:
&chd=t:40,15,7,8,10,20&chl=Dell|Apple|Sony|IBM|HP|Toshiba

That’s it! Google makes creating charts and graphs on the fly easy. This is just one example of a chart you can creat using this API. There are plenty of other possibilities and applications of this. Combine this API with a bit of server side programming knowledge and you can create beautiful web sites and web applications. If you would like to learn more about the Google Charts API check out the API documentation.

Here is the complete code for this tutorial.

<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chs=300x100&chd=t:40,15,7,8,10,20&chl=Dell|Apple|Sony|IBM|HP|Toshiba" alt="Sample Chart">

Just a quick update.  I had upgraded to firefox 3 because its god damn amazing and everything was fine for about a day, then suddenly i lost my bookmarks.  I lost all bookmaring functionality. Needless to say i was bummed and completely helpless.  I tried a bunch of different techniques to get them back with no success.  Then at the last minute I found the appropriate fix.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Lost_bookmarks_after_Firefox_3_upgrade

I followed the instructions for the manual deletion method and next thing you know i had my old book marks back.  Glorious.  If anyone else is still having trouble with this just leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help out.