June 24, 2009 in Learn
Should you go Beyond Relational Databases?
Relational databases, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL and various commercial products, have served us well for many years. Lately, however, there has been a lot of discussion on whether the relational model is reaching the end of its life-span, and what…
April 10, 2009 in Learn
How to build mobile widgets
If you’re a web developer or designer, there’s a really exciting development happening right now called ‘mobile widgets’. Carsonified is working with Betavine to spread the word about mobile widgets, so we recently spent four days building one in order…
March 2, 2009 in Learn
40 Web Developers to Follow on Twitter
Update: You can now follow this list with just one click. Head over to the @carsonified/top-web-devs list. I’ve been on Twitter since 2006 (@ryancarson) and it’s where I get all my news these days. It’s important to know who to…
January 20, 2009 in Learn
How to Create an RSS-Enabled, Micro-Blog with Twitter
Have you ever wanted to create a simple multi-person blog, but didn’t want to bother setting up an entire WordPress installation? If so then we’ve got just the answer. By combining Twitter Search, Atom feeds, hash-tags and PHP, you can…
December 17, 2008 in Learn
When you fail, it's time to try again
No one is successful 100% of the time. Just look at entreprenuers like Richard Branson (founder of Virgin) and Milton Hershey (founder of Hershey’s Chocolate). They are (were) both extremely succesful and yet they’ve also had some spectacular failures (remember…
October 29, 2008 in Learn
Sell Your Web App: Lessons I Learned From Selling DropSend
We just sold DropSend, a little web application that we built some three years ago. Basically, the app enables users to send large files easily, rather than emailing them. It’s been profitable from the start, but I decided to sell…
September 16, 2008 in Learn
Review: Silverback, Usability and the Mac
Silverback is an application from Clearleft that aims to make simple usability testing easy and within the budget of all web professionals. Nate Klaiber tests it out in this review.
August 7, 2008 in Learn
How to Debug in PHP
Nobody enjoys the process of debugging their code. If you want to build killer web apps though, it’s vital that you understand the process thoroughly. This article breaks down the fundamentals of debugging in PHP, helps you understand PHP’s error…
April 28, 2008 in Learn
Our idea of success is all messed up
Update: I’ve added a few more web apps to the list at the end. My last post on Web Mission stirred up a lot of discussion so I’d like to expand on my original thoughts. My main point was not…
March 5, 2008 in Learn
Coding for the mobile web
Introduction Good evening — in this article I will aim to demystify the world of mobile web development, or in other words, developing web sites so that they will provide an acceptable user experience on mobile devices. I’ll run through…
September 11, 2007 in Learn
How to Price your Web App
Pricing is always somewhat of a black art, and a subject about which there is precious little written with regard to web applications. It’s something I’ve always been fascinated by. The question of how to price our web application, Litmus,…
August 6, 2007 in Learn
Copywriting for eCommerce
A site’s copy is one of its most important elements — especially in the world of eCommerce. And in eCommerce one of the worst mistakes a copywriter can make when writing is to concentrate only on product descriptions. While product…