A month or two ago, I got an invoice for a hosting package I set up two years ago for flCodr (which is no longer being developed). It came as a bit of a shock, as there wasn’t any notification from the hosting company to let me know.

While things like this are really up to me to know, it would have been nice to have a reminder. Many (good) hosting companies do this for you, but you sometimes have hosting and domain reg with two parties, plus for whatever reason you may have different providers for each client/site.

It can quickly become a bit of a nightmare, keeping track of renewal dates.

To solve this I propose to build a really simple web app (still to decide on a name) that will allow you to list all of your hosting and registration details and be notified via email and Twitter when they are due to expire. That’s it, nothing more. Oh and you can only sign up via Twitter (this does away with a full auth system) –  no Twitter, no account!

In a nutshell the app will:

• Auto lookup the WhoIs info for each domain entered and try and auto fill details
• Allow you to sign up ONLY via Twitter oAuth. Avatar, display name and email (I think) will be pulled from Twitter.
• Notify you via email, (if you allow it) via Twitter (DM only – you probably don’t want the whole world knowing that http://www.kinkyladyboys is ready for renewal) and for iOS (prowl or Boxcar)
• Allow you to specify the notification period (month, week, day before)
• Allow you to notify (via email only) a third party (maybe an accounts dept)
• Assign an action next to each service (free text input that gets sent with the notification)

Hopefully this is something that I should be able to knock together fairly quickly using CodeIgniter.

If you have any thoughts, ideas or feedback (or a name for the service) then please sound off in the comments!

I’ll throw some wireframes together soon, and get them online!

The only question you really need to answer is 3G or not 3G.

I opted for the non 3G version – my logic was this:

The iPad whilst compact and portable is not truly portable – it’s not the kind of thing you can fit in your pocket and i’d feel less than comfortable using it on public transport. For that reason my use would mainly be restricted to home, work and family where Wi-Fi is available. For these reasons I opted for the cheaper WiFi only model.

Whilst this was more than fine at home, I decided to take the iPad out to the pub (there was quite a lot of family there, so thought it would be a good opportunity to go through some photos) and for the first time realised how dependant the iPad was on the internet. Apart from showing photos, a few videos and Pages most of the other apps I had installed required an internet connection.

Normally this wouldn’t be an issue as I would always have my iPhone with me and thus an internet connection, however I felt that I was missing out on something.

I had been contemplating getting a Three MiFi dongle for a while for use with my MacBook Air, and now seemed like the perfect time. £69.99 gets you a dongle on Pay as you go and 3GB or 3months of data, whichever gets used first.

Set up was a breeze and it worked out of the box – the credit was pre applied and no registration was needed. The device works in such a way that you can create a WiFi network, without being connected to the 3G network. Whilst this may seem an extra step, it means that you can have a local network without using any of your allowance in the background.

You may be thinking “for an extra £30 you could have had 3G built in”. Whilst true, this solution does mean that I have a connection for my MBA and iPad at the same time. I can also easily create a WiFi network between my iPhone and MBA which is ideal when using Keynote Remote (anybody that has tried to ad-hoc solution will agree that it is less than perfect).

I have found the connection to be good in the areas that I have tried to use it, and compared to the signal strength of o2′s network seems comparable.

Sure, it’s a little inconvenient to switch the dongle on first to connect, but the times when I need to quickly check something I will just use my iPhone, plus it isn’t like i’ll be taking the iPad out ‘on the road’ all of the time!

If you’d like more info in the Three MiFi hit the link below:

http://siz.la/hfk

Like most of the purchases I make from Apple, this was one of want rather than need. However saying that, this is worth all of the four hundred and twenty nine pounds that it was exchanged for.

This post is obviously being written on the wonderful WordPress for iPad app and is a joy to use.

There isn’t really much more to say really, any of you who own an iPad will understand just how amazing this thing really is.

Oh and if you haven’t already checked out Vimeo and iPlayer yet on an iPad, go and do so…. Now!

They are both shining examples of why flash isn’t needed for video online (that’s not to say flash doesn’t have its uses online – I’m a flash dev and there are times when using flash was not only the best choice but the only choice).

So @spotify have released a new version of their desktop based application that adds a stack of social features.

One of these is a user profile which displays your playlists, aswell as your top played artists and tracks.

I created a simple WordPress plugin that enables you to easily add a button in your sidebar that links to your Spotify profile.

The widget has two options – one for your username, and the other for the text you wish to be displayed on the button.

To install follow these steps:

• Download the plugin
• Upload to wp-content/plugins
• Activate
• Customise the widget by adding your username and the text you would like displayed in the link

This is a simple widget with a simple function. If you’d like more features, just ask and i’ll see what I can do!

On countless occasions, I have been asked – “Why does the PDF open in my browser rather than download?” and my answer has always been – “Because you need to right click and choose Save As!”.

Rather than trying to do any fancy server side stuff Downloadr will display an overlay with instructions on how to do this. You can ofcourse just right click on the link and download as you normally would.

These instructions are tailored to the browser that the user is viewing your page in.

Not only that, but Downloadr will also style your link to look more like a button, so your user knows where to click.

To view a demo and download the plugin, head over to the microsite.

You may be thinking – “Why not just use the widget they released?” – because it didn’t fit into the design or style of my site – plus with this I can pick and choose the information that is displayed.

Getting the updates onto my site was made easy by using the jFeed and timeago jQuery plugins.

First of all, go and grab the files from here and here.

The only files we really need from the jFeed download is the plugin itself located in build > dist > jquery.jfeed.pack.js and a file called proxy.php. Upload these and the jquery.timeago.js from the TimeAgo download to somewhere on your server and add a link to the head of your document.

Next, head over to the feeds section on Foursquare and copy the link to your RSS feed (it looks like the image below).

Next step is to create the Javascript to parse the feed. We need to pass this through the proxy.php file due to the fact that the file we are requesting is on a different server to the one we are calling it from. The read me documentation said that this shouldn’t be used – but what the hell I just ignored it!

Don’t forget to add your FourSquare feed in below!

$.getFeed({
        url: 'proxy.php?url=YOUR FOURSQUARE FEED.rss',
        success: function(feed) {
 
            var html = '
<ul>';
 
           for(var i = 0; i &lt; feed.items.length &amp;&amp; i &lt; 5; i++) {
 
                var item = feed.items[i];
 
                html += '
	<li>'
                + '<a href="'                 + item.link                 + '">'
                + item.title
                + '</a> - '
                + jQuery.timeago(item.updated);
                + '</li>
';
 
            }
 
            html += '</ul>
';
 
            $('#foursquare').append(html);
        }
    });

So to explain, the above Javascript passed the FourSquare RSS feed through the proxy.php and then creates a variable called html with an opening <ul> tag. Upon each iteration of the loop, upto a maximum of 5 the function then selects the title, link and when the checkin occurred and adds this to a <li> element. This newly created <li> containing the link and time is then added to the html variable. When the html variable ends, the closing </ul> tag is added.

The whole html variable is then appending via jQuery to a div with the ID of foursquare, pretty simple!

Oh, you’ll notice that the time stamp is passed through jQuery.timeago() – this is so we get a nicely formatted timestamp. You can read more about jQuery.timeago() here.

Take a look at a demo over at http://www.leonbarrett.com

In my presentation I talked about how making your brand and data as easily to access as possible by opening up as many platforms as possible could be a benefit.

The talk focused on the mobile web and how advances in technology are opening up a new wave of location based applications and increasing participation due to the nature of instant on mobile applications.

You can view the slides here – http://bit.ly/b2wHMT

Recently I have been involved in a number of projects using PayPal as a payment gateway. The implementations ranged from the basic buy now buttons, to full blown use of the API to create a recurring based platform for a web app.

I decided to release my library for you all to use within your PayPal/Codeigniter powered applications.

The library assumes that you are familiar with the PayPal NVP API and the methods of how to use PayPal for a web based application.

The library also builds on the fantastic work of Ran Aroussi http://codeigniter.com/wiki/PayPal_Lib/ to take advantage of receiving Instant Payment Notifications.

The library requires CI 1.7.2 and higher – view the library on the CI Wiki page – http://codeigniter.com/wiki/PayPal_NVP_API_Lib/

You can read the documentation and download the library from here bit.ly/cr2fIM

CodeIgniter PayPal NVP API Library by Leon Barrett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at aroussi.com.

For a while now i’ve been toying with the idea of creating an iPhone App. Due to my knowledge of web technologies such as XHTML and Javascript, I wanted to see how I could create an iPhone application using these techniques. With wanting to learn some of the new features HTML 5 would offer, I decided to create an app that tied into the GeoLocation API now available to the iPhone, via the 3.0 update.

Without planning anything out, I dived right into the HTML5 Geo Location spec and  successfully outputted the location as a Lat and Long value. This was pretty cool, but a lat and long on their own were pretty pointless (see what I did there).

I’d previously done some work using the Google Maps API and Flash (now no longer working due to an outdated version of the GMaps API), and thought i’d try my hand at plotting your current location on a Google Map.

This worked and I decided that rather than just showing your location, i’d tie this in with the Google Local Search API and allow you to search for things near your location.

Now before anyone starts moaning and saying that this functionality is already available, I wanted to create a Web App for a number of reasons:

• To see how close I could get to the look and feel of a native app.
• To learn some shiny new HTML5.
• I needed a little sideline project.
• It could become a base for some sort of snazzy location based events app.

So onto the actual app – I called it Showee and if you navigate to http://www.showee.me on your iPhone you’ll be able to see it in all it’s glory, (if you try it in a regular browser, you probably won’t see anything yet as I haven’t created a non iPhone version).

First thing to do is tap the (+) and choose ‘Add to home screen’, this way you’ll be able to appreciate how close this looks and feels like a native app (there is a status bar that gives you feedback about what the application is doing).

On load you will be asked to share you location. If you accept the application will determine your location and place a blue dot at your location. If the accuracy is greater than 20m it will keep checking your location for an improvement. Once your location has been determined to within 20m the app will stop searching.

At the moment that is pretty much it, but I plan to add more features in the future.