ReidBurke

I have read a few articles about how PHP is a perfectly good first language and how it should never be a first. These articles are interesting because my first programming language was PHP† and I have been using it extensively since 2004. One thing is true: it's really easy to get started with PHP. My first real job was creating a system to log phone call metadata from a PBX. I was able to get a working version up quickly ...

I’ve recently started a new job and relocated from the midwest to California. I’ve been extremely busy in the last few weeks but I’m finally starting to get settled.

Check out my photos of my first few days in CA, a weekend in SF ice skating and eating food, and a weekend at Camp Yahoo! 2008 playing Rock Band.

I didn’t realize until after the movers left that my Mac mini, which hosts my YUI addons, was packed up with everything else. Today I finally have a working internet connection in my apartment and my Mac mini is happily serving up my YUI addons Trac, SVN and downloads again!

Check out the screenshots of TripLog/1040, The Athlete’s Calculator, and Handy Randy, new iPhone applications from PalmOS developer Stevens Creek Software. Via Gruber, who points out that this really isn’t a joke.

I was flipping channels today when I came across this logo for newly rebranded WGN America (formerly “Superstation WGN”). What’s odd is that they started out with a good logo, rebranded with a worse logo, and have now come to his: a dominating artsy pair of eyes staring at you with the incorporated slogan: “TV You Can’t Ignore.” Brand New has the scoop:

Lee Abrams, chief innovation officer of WGN America’s parent company Tribune Broadcasting Company, stated the following craziness: “[the new brand would] look and sound… like nothing else out there.” [...]

The logo was designed in-house as we learn from this scary sentence in the MediaWeek link above: “In an earlier memo, Abrams said that he had sent WGN’s creative director ‘a few Pink Floyd albums’ after she had turned in some uninspired art/voiceovers.”

Yikes. The good news is that I couldn’t ignore it.

I've been busy in the last few weeks for good reason: I've been interviewing for a new job at Yahoo!. Today, it's official: I've accepted a position there working on technologies related to Yahoo! Open Strategy. While interviewing with Yahoo!, I met a lot of awesome people and can't want to start working with a few of them. I believe that it'll be quite an experience for me personally and professionally. I'll be working with a team that is making technology ...

I’ve received a great response from the community about my ScrollTabView addon. I’d like to thank all of the visitors and people who have gave their feedback… and especially Eric Miraglia at YUI Blog for mentioning it! You guys rock!

I’ve setup a YUI Addons Trac to be the center for my future YUI development. If you’ve been interested in ScrollTabView, you can use Trac to keep tabs on my development and report problems. As I come up with new stuff, I’ll point my current YUI page over there.

I don’t anticipate developing at a rapid pace; however, subscribing to Trac’s feeds can let you know when I’m making progress!

I've recently been tinkering with the excellent Yahoo! UI Library. My first contribution to the community is ScrollTabView, an extension of TabView that uses a scrolling animation to switch between tabs. (Just check out the examples.) My inspiration was Panic's Coda site as well as a few others. Now it's easy to create a similar effect on your site using YUI. Check out my new YUI addons page to grab the code and view more examples! Update: I've been featured on the official ...

I’m halfway through finals week at SIUC. As of right now, all that stands between me and vacation from school is a political science paper.

It’s been a busy semester and I’ll enjoy the break from academics. Instead, I’ll be working on nifty stuff at work among other (awesome) things.

Continuing with recent Yahoo news, the just-launched Y! Live is a new webcasting community similar to justin.tv or Stickam.

Both Y! Live and Stickam allow you to take part in sharing video as a visitor in a broadcaster’s channel, while justin.tv does not. However, I believe Y! Live’s experience is better than any of those competitors. The Y! Live developer API allows you to go beyond search like justin.tv– you can actually mashup video streams. (Stickam doesn’t even have an API.) The site is billed as a “experimental release” so it’ll be interesting to see how Y! Live will evolve. More on the launch is available on their blog.

I’ll be experimenting with the site by going live when I can, stop by and say hi!

Matthew Karnitschnig reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

Yahoo’s board believes that Microsoft’s is trying to take advantage of the recent weakness in the company’s share price to “steal” the company. The decision to reject the offer signals that Yahoo’s board is digging in its heels for what could be a long takeover battle. The company is unlikely to consider any offer below $40 per share, the person said.

Let’s hope Yahoo doesn’t get burned by a possible shareholder revolt. It’s a really interesting move for Yahoo and I’m anxious to see what happens.
[via DF]