It’s been a long time since the blog has gotten a fresh coat of CSS and Design (or paint..), so I finally decided to sit down and take what I know about WordPress and create a brand new theme. So here you are!

The colors are taken from my previous theme because they do go very well together. The structure and layout somewhat remained the same, though few unneeded items were removed for now, such as advertisements and recent posts/comments.

With the new design I have incorporated some of my social network accounts, such as Flickr and my Twitter account. The Twitter can be found at the very top with the text linkable to my twitter account, which I might change soon.

There are still a few things I need to work on, feedback would be appreciated.

Update: I will be updating WordPress today, so things might be buggy for a little while.

Update 2: Updated to WordPress, everything seems to be fine.

As the first development stage (beta, duh) of Apricot narrows down, I think it’s a good time to give a quick overview of what it is and how it will work.

Apricot is aimed at people who want an easy way to setup a quick chat room that they can share with friends, family of work colleagues. Upon registration, Apricot will automatically setup the room for you with the correct name and from day one start a complete history of your chat room.

Everything can be found on the Apricot Home page. Account settings, chat room settings and even your room history. With an AJAX powered home page, your content is presented in fast, intuitive and easy to use interface.

I will give a more in-depth look into the workings of Apricot as launch date gets closer (June 12th), so be sure to check back regularly.

Orange, the first application released under Simple, has a little feature that will backup the list you have made into an easy to read .txt file that you can save for later use. The .txt file will sit on the server for 24-hours so that it will give you time and download it and keep it for later use.

These .txt files are in no way available to the public unless they know the file name, which is randomly generated based on a few calculated numbers. The random folders they sit in is also protected from outside use, and the files are also not linked anywhere other than the current session.

Why am I talking about this? I just wanted to point out that privacy is a big issue surrounding personal data, such as task lists, notes and other information. Sure Orange doesn’t sit on a secure connection, but no information is sent to the server unless the export feature is being used.

Backups of all the list files do happen, this way if you remember the file number and need the list, it can be recovered. I haven’t created a tool for this so if you need a list, just contact me.

I also attended Google I/O this week and all I can say is that Google is definitely a company that’s doing things right. Their passion for the community is just awesome and really helps developers get their ideas into the real world.

I was fortunate to sit in on a few great sessions, the favorite being “The State of AJAX” hosted by Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith, talking about how AJAX is being used and how JS libraries are becoming a great part of the JS community. (go jQuery). If you were unable to attend Google I/O, the opening Keynote, hosted by Vic Gundotra, is available on YouTube.

Have a good weekend.

So I am working on incorporating a tagging system into Orange. The first of the few basic tags would be Home, Play and Work. Not sure if I want to add more of have users add their own. It’s definitely work a look. Below is a quick walkthrough of the preliminary tagging system.

Let’s have a look at the selection screen:








It uses a simple drop down selection menu where you can choose pre-made tags. When you add the task, the JavaScript will do the rest in adding the tag to the task in the list below it. Not much room in here for creating your own tag, but will see how to implement it.

Tags in the list:

The screenshot above, shows a left-aligned tag system. Which links each task to its own tag in a more straight forward way. The other layout, below:

In this screenshot, the tags are right-aligned. This layout creates a more cleaner look for each individual task, but the problem occurs with a person easily connected a task to its tag.

No I’m not talking about the fruit, although it’s always good to have a glass of fresh orange juice. Orange is a small task or to-do list editor. It’s the first of many applications to be released under the ’simple’ brand (more information coming soon).

Orange goes back to basics of creating a task list. No registration required because it doesn’t save the information into a database. Instead, the task list is powered by javascript and css (and obviously xhtml) to provide you with a fast and simple interface. You do have options to import a list (copy/pasting) and exporting a list to a .txt file.

So visit Orange and tell me what you think.