The Whole Widget

Recently two Edinburgh conferences of interest to me have opened for registration.

The Highland Fling

The Highland Fling is an annual one-day conference aimed at web developers and businesses with an interest in web standards and accessibility.

Now in its second year, this years event takes place on Thursday 3rd April at the Symposium Hall, part of the Royal College of Surgeons, and focuses on the topic of "The Browser & Beyond". Here's a summary from the Highland Fling website outlining what will be discussed:

In the world or modern web development we can no longer consider the browser as the end point of our product which is our content. More and more devices and applications are being released that can access our information and more importantly do not even require a browser to do so.

For The Highland Fling 2008 we're bringing into focus how the landscape is changing. API's, desktop apps, ambient devices, mobile and much more are helping us break out of the browser and potentially reaching an entire new audience as a result.

How do we embrace this, how do we take our existing skill set and transpose it into new mediums? How do we expand our skill set? What is our skill set going to be? Where is it all going?

The sessions look quite interesting and I'm particularly looking forward to hearing what Aral Balkan has to say as I saw him at d.Construct in 2006 and was exposed to Flex for the first time.

Scotland on Rails

Coming hot on the heels of The Highland Fling is the inaugural Scottish conference on Ruby on Rails — Scotland On Rails.

This is the first UK-centric Ruby on Rails conference and is a two day event on Friday 4rd and Saturday 5th April. When you consider that this is a regional conference the organisers have pulled off quite a coup with the quality of talent that they have assembled to present.

This will be my first conference I have attended that concentrates more on the back end of developing web applications and I'm looking forward to learning some exciting new things and meeting some interesting people.

If you're attending either of these events don't feel shy about saying hello.

Excellent! My favourite backup solution for making bootable backups of my Macs has been updated so as to support Mac OS X Leopard.

If you've never used it before I strongly recommend you check it out.

SuperDuper! 2.5 Released!: "Shirt Pocket is happy to announce that SuperDuper 2.5 is now available as a free update for all users. The new version includes full Leopard support, including the ability to store a bootable backup side-by-side with a Time Machine backup on a single volume, and the ability to copy Time Machine archives to other drives for backup purposes or to move to a larger drive without losing history."

(Via Shirt Pocket Blog.)

I'm literally stunned by the news that Microsoft has offered $44.6 Billion for Yahoo!I can't say I'm too thrilled with the prospect that popular web apps that I like to use such as Flickr, Upcoming and del.icio.us are going to be owned by Microsoft.Obviously this will have to get approval from the appropriate regulatory body, but if this comes to pass then it looks like Google is going to have some serious competition in the search and web app fields.

Thermo looks like a great tool from Adobe.

"Thermo" is an upcoming Adobe product that makes it easy for designers to create rich Internet application UIs.Thermo allows designers to build on familiar workflows to visually create working applications that easily flow into production and development.

I can't wait to get my hands on it. Watch the videos from Aral Balkan to get an idea as to what it can do.Thermo Sneak Peek at Adobe MAX Day 2 Keynote (Via Aral Balkan)

If, like me, you grow tired of Mac OS X displaying multiple duplicate items in the "Open With" contextual menu item for files then simply enter the following into the terminal to restore the menu to it's original pristine state.

/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/\
Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister \
-kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

You may need to logout then login or force quite the Finder in order to see the change.

Looks like my old trusty first generation 5GB iPod is going to have to be replaced.The new iPod Touch. Just what I was after, an iPhone without the phone.

I'm currently travelling down to London on the train to attend @media 2007, so thought I'd take a moment to take advantage of GNER's wireless internet access and outline what I'm planning to see.

The whole lineup looks great but because most of the event is run on two seperate tracks I'm forced to make a choice about whick speakers I would like to hear.

Thursday morning kicks off with Beyond Ajax, the keynote by Jesse James Garrett.Next up is the choice of Molly E. Holzschlag or Jason Santa Maria. I'd really love to hear both of these speakers and I'm torn as to who to go and see.On one hand I've heard many of Molly's previous presentations via podcast of various web conferences over the last couple of years and am unsure if there will be much that I haven't heard already. On the other I'm aware that she is giving up the conference circuit and so this might be my last chance to hear here at a live event.I'm trying to make a conscious effort to learn more about the areas that I am weakest as a web developer and so hearing Jason talk about design is a prime opportunity to learn from one of the most respected designers in the industry about a topic that isn't my strongest field.I think this might have to come down to going to whichever room I can get a seat in as I expect both rooms to be rammed.Next up I think I'm going to attend Drew McLellan and Simon Collison's presentation on Design vs. Implementation. I've heard both of these speakers before and I think it should be a light hearted affair but still outlining the tough choices that need to be made everyday when designing sites with web standards while still maintaining a design flair.After lunch I'm hoping to catch Dan Cederholm's presentation on http://www.vivabit.com/atmedia2007/europe/sessions/#interface. Dan is the founder of SimpleBits, co-founded the wine community site Cork’d and is a designer I've admired for some time. Like Jason earlier I'm hoping to pick up some top design and process tips so that I can improve my skills in this area.After Dan I'm confronted with a tough choice once again as Mark Boulton and Tantek Çelik go head to head. I think I'm leaning towards going to Mark's presentation as, like Molly earlier, I've heard Tantek talk about Microformats via podcast a number of times whilst typography is an area in which I am becoming increasingly interested in and could do with learning a bit more about.Day one ends with Joe Clark talking about When Web Accessibility Is Not Your Problem. I'm really looking forward to hearing Joe Speak as I've been a regular subscriber to his blog for years and love the way he is passionate about everything he does and the forthright manner in which he expresses his views.Well, that's day one's agenda sorted and I think I'll take a break here for now. I'll post later on what I'm looking forward to for day 2.

Interesting times ahead. I may now seriously look into Flex.

Adobe is announcing plans to open source Flex under the Mozilla Public License (MPL). This includes not only the source to the ActionScript components from the Flex SDK, which have been available in source code form with the SDK since Flex 2 was released, but also includes the Java source code for the ActionScript and MXML compilers, the ActionScript debugger and the core ActionScript libraries from the SDK. The Flex SDK includes all of the components needed to create Flex applications that run in any browser - on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux and on now on the desktop using “Apollo”.Developers can use the Flex SDK to freely develop and deploy Flex applications using either Adobe Flex Builder or an IDE of their choice.

Adobe to Open Source Flex (Via Adobe Labs)

Designers, developers, project managers. Writers and editors. Information architects and usability specialists. People who make websites have been at it for more than a dozen years, yet almost nothing is known, statistically, about our profession. Who are we? Where do we live? What are our titles, our skills, our educational backgrounds? Where and with whom do we work? What do we earn? What do we value?

I've just taken the survey. So should you if you work in the web design industry.