Found an encyclopedic list of “stupid” .htaccess tricks. Includes many useful ones such as being able to stop hotlinking of images and replacing with your own, increasing speed and security and general good-to-know htaccess information.

Meebo, which I have recently been turned on to, yesterday released an iPhone client which is basically a web interface to their chat website (which integrates AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, gtalk, and more). It looks great, take a peek:

That is great that they are developing this and I applaud them for their efforts of releasing updates on mobile devices.

Now, maybe I have iPhone envy, but wouldn’t it make sense to release this for Windows Mobile since the market share that Windows Mobile has is MUCH greater than iPhone? According to Gartner, Windows Mobile shipped a little over 3 million devices in the 1st quarter of 2007 alone (and that number does not even include “Smartphone” devices). iPhone, according to their own estimates [MacNewsWorld], will sell a million units by Sept 30th.

I asked Meebo about their plans for Windows Mobile. Here is the response I received from Sue:

As far as a Windows Mobile version of meebo, it’s
something that we’ve thought about and are interested in, but at the
moment we don’t have development time and resources to add support for
every device we’d like to.

Here is where it gets tricky. There may be a great market penetration for Windows Mobile - but it is not easy to develop a web app for it because there is no standardized browser platform. Sure, you have Internet Explorer Mobile, but let’s face it - IEM is program is not very good at rendering web pages and would be a nightmare to develop for. Each version of Windows Mobile has differences in IEM that designers would have to be conscious of. The other browsers that Windows Mobile users have the option of using: Opera Mobile, Netfront, Minimo - do not have enough market penetration to make it development worthwhile. [on a sidenote, Opera Mobile is the best browser for Windows Mobile, give it a try if you haven't already.]

Hence, we have the major difference between Windows Mobile and iPhone OS. Windows Mobile, although an “open” system that allows developers to create their own programs, has the problem of having a high cost to develop because you need to have Windows Mobile programming experience.

On the other hand, the iPhone, with it’s “Closed” OS, has a standardized browser that works well and is easy to write web code for. Web publishers around the world are free to write code for it in their native programming languages because the browser is the component that renders the graphics and takes care of the network.

So how is this problem resolved? Nintendo seems to have fixed this very same issue by offering Opera for Wii via the Wii Shop channel. Wii users who install this browser have many options available out there for web interfaces that are designed specifically for the Opera browser on Wii - most notable of these is Orb, which has a beautiful interface for the Wii. Microsoft, ever the profitable company it is, wants users to use IE on Windows Mobile and therefore bundles IEM.

Microsoft needs to get with the program and make their browser easier to write for and more standards compliant. If that doesn’t happen, then we are definitely looking at an iPhone future for mobile devices.

If you use Windows Mobile, please contact Meebo and let them know that you’d like to see a Windows Mobile version of Meebo!

I’ve joined the Twitter world. My Twitter Profile.

I’ve created a small 16 x 16 mini Twitter icon. Feel free to steal it! I resized the icon from deanjrobinson.

Let me know if anyone knows of a Windows Mobile application for Twitter that includes a today screen plugin, that makes it easy to post to twitter.

Joomla! 1.0.12 appears to have a pathway bug. If you use a component other than com_frontpage for the “Home page” of Joomla - meaning the first link in mainmenu and the page that appears when you load the root of the Joomla! site - then when you click on an article you get a “Double pathway”, for example the pathway will state “Home > Home > Title of article”. The Home, or whatever you named this link, part will be duplicated. It isn’t a big problem but it does look unprofessional on your site!

I looked for ages for a fix to this problem, and eventually found it but the site I can not find the site I originally downloaded this fix from. It is courtesy of Reinhard Hiebl - www.hieblmedia.de (whos site is in German, one reason why I’m saving it here). I thought I would throw it online here for your download. The fix is in two parts of code in /includes/pathway.php.

At line 54 in includes/pathway.php:

// Fix for dublicate home if home have childs //
// by Reinhard Hiebl -- www.hieblmedia.de //////
// get first published item
$query = "SELECT id"
. "\n FROM #__menu"
. "\n WHERE published = 1"
. "\n AND parent = 0"
. "\n AND menutype = 'mainmenu'"
. "\n AND access <= " . (int) $my->gid
. "\n ORDER BY ordering"
. "\n LIMIT 1"
;
$database->setQuery( $query );
$first_mitem = $database->loadResult( 'id' );
////////////////////////////////////////////////

And at line 284 in includes/pathway.php immediately after “$item =& $mitems[$mid];”:

// Fix for dublicate home if home have childs //
// by Reinhard Hiebl -- www.hieblmedia.de //////
if ( $item->id == $first_mitem && !$item->parent ) {
break;
}
////////////////////////////////////////////////

I also have the file zipped up so you can just replace includes/pathway.php with this file. Note that this is for version 1.0.12 only, so it might not work with previous or newer versions.

pathway.zip

I happened upon a great site for a list of names. The list is meant to be used to get pet names, however I happened across this when I was looking for a list of themed names for servers. It includes both self-hosted pages and also links to other lists of names.

List of names by theme.

Even if you aren’t looking for a name, this site still includes interested lists to look through, if you are a geek like me

If you are looking for a great Java based IRC client, I would suggest PJIRC. It is really easy to integrate into your web pages; and includes the html code that you need to embed it onto a page. It is very flexible, for example you can tell it to automatically join a server that you specify, and have it automatically execute a command, such as joining a channel.

It’s a small download, and runs really quickly, which was always a downside of the other IRC Java applets I’ve tried. The GUI really isn’t too bad. It has tabs for different channels, a full scroll window, right click ability for whois, op, de-op, and more.

Download PJIRC

Looking for some small 16 by 16 icons for your website or other application? So was I. Here is what I’ve found:

• bulletmadness - large general use list, some brand specific
• urlgreyhot - (cool star trek reference) - a few mini and brand specific
• famfamfam - the motherload of small icons
• sweetie - pretty large icon set
• favicon.fr - its in french but easy enough to understand, and lots of icons here.
• paul armstrong designs - gallery2 icon set

Here is my contribution, a MySpace icon.