Homer Gaines

Just got this in my email figured I’d share

Over the coming weeks, we will be making two important updates that will impact how you interact with Twitter applications. We are sending this notice to all Twitter users to make sure you are aware of these changes.

What are applications?

There are over 250,000 applications built using the Twitter API. To use most applications, you first authorize the application to access your Twitter account, after which you can use it to read and post Tweets, discover new users and more. Applications come in many varieties, including desktop applications like TweetDeck, Seesmic, or EchoFon, websites such as TweetMeme, fflick, or Topsy, or mobile applications such as Twitter for iPhone, Twitter for Blackberry, or Foursquare.

Update 1: New authorization rules for applications

Starting August 31, all applications will be required to use “OAuth” to access your Twitter account.

What’s OAuth?

OAuth is a technology that enables applications to access Twitter on your behalf with your approval without asking you directly for your password.
Desktop and mobile applications may still ask for your password once, but after that request, they are required to use OAuth in order to access your timeline or allow you to tweet.
What does this mean for me?

Applications are no longer allowed to store your password.
If you change your password, the applications will continue to work.
Some applications you have been using may require you to reauthorize them or may stop functioning at the time of this change.
All applications you have authorized will be listed at http://twitter.com/settings/connections.
You can revoke access to any application at any time from the list.
Update 2: t.co URL wrapping

In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the roll-out of our link wrapping service t.co, which wraps links in Tweets with a new, simplified link. Wrapped links are displayed in a way that is easier to read, with the actual domain and part of the URL showing, so that you know what you are clicking on. When you click on a wrapped link, your request will pass through the Twitter service to check if the destination site is known to contain malware, and we then will forward you on to the destination URL. All of that should happen in an instant.

You will start seeing these links on certain accounts that have opted-in to the service; we expect to roll this out to all users by the end of the year. When this happens, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL.

What does this mean for me?

A really long link such as http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048 might be wrapped as http://t.co/DRo0trj for display on SMS, but it could be displayed to web or application users as amazon.com/Delivering- or as the whole URL or page title.
You will start seeing links in a way that removes the obscurity of shortened links and lets you know where each link will take you.
When you click on these links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click. We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time.
Thanks for reading this important update. Come and check what’s new at http://twitter.com.

Thanks,
The Twitter Team

First let me say i’m somewhat tired of the HTML 5 vs. Flash debate. I am a fan of BOTH and plan on using them both in my projects as needed. And i’m even more tired of Steve Jobs saying the same thing over and over. We get it, he doesn’t like flash. He want’s everyone to buy the iPad, and he want’s everyone to use HTML 5 instead of Flash because it’s, in his opinion, better and open.

But when I see things like the HTML 5 Demo on Apples site that only works in the Safari browser I am reminded of one thing, Internet Explorer. Now granted, it’s not a 100% direct translation of the problems IE caused but when something is labeled as a “standard” that DOES NOT WORK IN ALL BROWSERS ON ALL PLATFORMS then it’s not STANDARD!

Just for clarification, I have a PC (Win 7) and a Mac (Snow Leopard).  Currently i’m on my PC and my browser of choice is Chrome which is a web-kit based browser that supports HTML 5 and CSS 3 .

Visiting the site and trying to view the  HTML 5 demos in any other browser that supports HTML 5 gets you this nice little message.

After you have switched to Safari, the demos work and perform just fine until you get to the VR demo which gives you this alert..

“ This demo requires a browser that supports CSS 3D transforms.

To view this demo, you’ll need Safari on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Safari on iPhone OS, or the latest WebKit Nightly Build.”

So now I need to be on a Mac Running Leopard. This demo is platform dependent and this is standard? Really? Standard only applies to Apple products at this point.

Fail.

Just launched a new website project that I did for the Art Advisory Service.  One of the reasons I enjoyed working on this project was the opportunity to do a minimalistic design.

My initial thoughts after speaking with them about their project was to design a site that came to life with brush strokes inspired by sumi-e.  But after further exploration and conversations, the design evolved into what you see today.

Client: Art Advisory Service

Built using: HTML / CSS / Flash

“When the elephants fight, the grass suffers!”

I  often say that when referencing political, self serving, chest pounding, pissing contests that get in the way of good ideas or people doing good work.  I, as were many others, was looking forward to the updates in adobe’s new CS5, especially the ability to develop an app using flash and export it as an iPhone app. But after reading this, it’s clear that myself and anyone else with those same ambitions will have to focus our attention on other mobile platforms such as android.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/demos/

Not happy with Apple right now for such a schoolyard stunt days before CS5 is launched this Monday.

Read more about it on  Mashable

http://mashable.com/2010/04/08/apple-adobe-flash-compiler/