Author: Albert Crowley
August 30, 2012
Mobile Browser Detection and Redirects
Responsive web design is a great thing. It lets you use a single URL for phone/table/desktop browsers and give each user an experience optomized for their device. Sometimes though, you need to present fundamentally different web content to an iOS or Android…
July 11, 2012
Tech Conference Videos Online
Like many older generation software developers, i.e. the set of programmers over 29, I have a lot of commitments that I can’t put on hold for days at a time. In my professional life, I have my standard work hours. Then I usually have one…
June 21, 2012
Automatic recursive commits in CVS for large source trees
TCG has a number of long running projects. Some of them are still using the CVS revision control system because it is working well for our particular use case and the scope of the project doesn’t justify the cost in moving…
May 31, 2012
ORCID Proposes Unique Identifiers For Scientific Authors
Uniquely identifying people in an electronic database can be a very hard problem. I ran into this problem on my first project with TCG and it has come up a number of times since then. Given a large enough sample size, you can find…
March 31, 2012
Project: Facebook Data Liberation — Part 4 — Reading Feeds
Back in Part 1, I explained why I’m making this HTML5 application. The condensed version of the story so far is that I’m making is a web/mobile app that can read a running/fitness Facebook group feed. Now we are up to Part 4 where…
March 30, 2012
Embracing the Tag Pattern on Social Sites
I’ve conditioned myself to use keyboard shortcuts whenever possible. I think it’s a lot faster to keep your hands on the keys whenever possible. When I’m trying to help someone with a computer problem, though, I stay quiet about how this or that keyboard…
Project: Facebook Data Liberation — Part 3 — Authentication
There are a few ways to work with the Facebook API in a HTML5 application. You can use their JavaScript SDK, you can do the integration on the server side, or you can make direct calls with your own JavaScript functions. I'm going to use that last technique.
March 29, 2012
Project: Facebook Data Liberation — Part 2
Back in Part 1 I explained why I’m making this HTML5 application. The condensed version of what I’m making is a web/mobile app that can read a running/fitness Facebook group feed, display the complete list of posts in it, and scan all the content…
March 27, 2012
How To Build an Online Community
One key to the success of the NITRC web site is the strong community support we have from it’s target audience: neuroscience researchers. This didn’t happen overnight. There were a lot of steps that led up to where we are now, and…
Project: Facebook Data Liberation — Part 1
One year ago my wife, Elizabeth, started a facebook group to help encourage people with their personal exercise programs. She didn’t know if her friends would be at all interested in participating. It turns out that not only were they interested…