Author Archives: Admin

Efficiency and Independence, Mankind’s next giant leap forwards

It’s July 4th, and it dawned on me today that so many of the things we grew up being futuristic actually depend on us getting greener. Look at any popular science, or popular mechanics issue from that last 50 years, and you’ll see articles discussing leisure, space travel, or solving large problems like world hunger. If you look at it, system efficiency are the largest hold ups. As we approach more efficient processes, things will get cheaper and easier.

Greentech is not just what’s needed to save us from a controversial end like, Climate Change, instead it’s how we can make Mankinds next giant leap forwards.

When my great grand father was growing up he witnessed something amazing, he witnessed the moment when mankind learned how to fly. He saw us go from failed experiments to creating roadways, and a deep transportation network that could transport resources over great distances cheaply. He witnessed what it took for us to land on the moon. At the core of it all was a shift in engine power density, or rather the amount of mechanical power we could generate with less weight.

Our generation will witness fantastic changes in efficiency:

  • Farming
  • Water
  • Computational
  • Lighting
  • Transportation
  • Manufacturing

For us to approach many of the challenges that we need to travel into deep space, we will need to be masters at living on less. It’s not about living with less, but that we might use less to do more. My hope is that we can look at green tech not as a way of scaling back, but as a way of reaching out.

Being green will allow us to leap farther, because we are weighed down less.

New Babelfin logo and Site design coming.

Babelfin Logo - Icon

Babelfin Logo - Icon

In the near future I hope to push out a version of Babelfin that will work in Japanese. Soon after I will release one in French. As part of that release I thought I would iterate a bit on the logo and the site layout. The previous logo was a one color logo with grey text ( which in print is two colors anyways ), this one is a two color log and is high contrast. I think the new logo is readable and distinct. I also hope that the subtle abstract nature of a fish bone is present.

I found inspiration for this logo via the hit show Mad Men and my recent visit to the Picasso exhibit.

Let me know if you like the logo, or if you are feeling bold, I would love to see what you come up with. Take this as inspiration.

As for the site at large, I really just need to add a call to action to collect email addresses and to send people a link to the plugin/ chrome extension. I felt like an email list is the best option until I can afford to dedicate some time to really write some copy. At some point I expect to add at least two more pages, one for each language. Over time I will start to add the other typical pages like About, etc… But for now I only need a landing page.

What are your thoughts?

Using Cellular Atomata as a Design Principal for ‘Natural Design’

I read this really thought provoking article using Cellular Atomata, prime numbers, and layered images to create seemingly random backgrounds for web pages. Yes, backgrounds for web pages.

The problem is that on so many web pages, load time is an issue and so is screen size, so it’s really hard to avoid those lines or patterns that seem to repeat and distract from the content on a variety of devices.

It’s actually a great design principal to accommodate randomness, so the eye can focus on the structured content. It’s kinda like having a great forest in the background to an architectural monument. If done right the monument and surrounding garden will really pop against the scene.

In any case the author, Alex Walker, discusses how to uses geometric patterns based on prime numbers to create a sort of randomness in the background. The examples he gives are a much more understandable explanation than say Stephan Wolfram gives about the value of cellular automata in creating natural systems.

I think this better illustrates what Stephan Wolfram was talking about with cellular automata.

It’s clearly brilliant to use it as a graphic design principle.

Maybe Cellular Atomata (CA) rules could be used to generate layout width & height rather than typical asymmetrical patterns? An app like Flipbook could benefit from it, to keep the page layouts feeling designed and fresh.

I think Alex is on to something here using CA (Cellular Atomata) as a design pattern.

I would love to see it in designing UX and Architecture. I would love to see CA being used as a way to generate dynamic, but structured design.

It’s brilliant. Imagine what Santiago Calatrava could do with such a pattern.

Paypal IPN Validation Fails with Adaptive Payments and PHP query/ post parameters

If you are looking for a solution you can find it here.
Thank you Gleb ( http://www.memberwing.com/ )

https://www.x.com/message/158509#158509

The problem comes in how the API is designed, and it takes advantage of a little known feature of query parameters and their allowed characters. Paypal uses array’ed parameters like:

&transaction[0].status=value

The problem is that PHP does not know how to parse the query parameter and either skips it or stops processing the list. ( i can’t remember which ).

Paypal’s Adaptive Payments API is neat and freshens up their functionality, and additionally uses JSON as a communication layer, so I think it’s clearly their future, however, there are a number of little problems like this as you walk through getting up to speed on the API. I hope this helps anyone in the future by saving them an hour to day.

It kinda reminds me of some of the problems we had getting the MySpaceID API up and polished so I guess this is a nod to all of those APIs that do it right the first time.

Cheers.

Getting VerifyStatus API working in Sandbox

There are a few caviots to getting the API working.
I hope this saves someone a few hours/ days.

  • CallerServices.php has a small bug
  • Only Sandbox email accounts work in the sandbox. Thanks for confiming @ppalavilli
  • ALL Sandbox accounts have the First Name: Test Thanks @ppalavilli
  • ALL Sandbox accounts have the Last Name: User Thanks @ppalavilli

If you get a

PHP Warning: Missing argument 3 for CallerServices::callWebService()

On line 101 of CallerServices.php you have:

function callWebService($request,$serviceName,$simpleXML)

It should read: //(most of the calls that use callWebService are parent::callWebService( $request,$serviceName ) anyways.

function callWebService($request,$serviceName,$simpleXML=NULL)
{
$response = null;
try {
    $endpoint=API_BASE_ENDPOINT.$serviceName;
    $response = call($request, $endpoint, $this->sandBoxEmailAddress,$simpleXML);
}
catch(Exception $ex) {
throw new FatalException('Error occurred in call method');
}
   return $response;
}

Here is the code I used. Replace {email} with one of your sandbox email addresses.

public function verify_email($params){
$VstatusRequest = new GetVerifiedStatusRequest();
 
$VstatusRequest->emailAddress = '{email}';
$VstatusRequest->matchCriteria = 'NAME';
$VstatusRequest->firstName = 'Test';
$VstatusRequest->lastName = 'User';
 
$rEnvelope = new RequestEnvelope();
$rEnvelope->errorLanguage = "en_US";
$VstatusRequest->requestEnvelope = $rEnvelope ;
 
$aa = new AdaptiveAccounts();
$response = $aa->GetVerifiedStatus($VstatusRequest);
 
echo json_encode($response);
  }

The JSON encoded object looks like such:

{"responseEnvelope":{
    "timestamp":"2011-03-25T15:37:32.44307:00",
    "ack":"Success",
    "correlationId":"42bce847aebc9",
    "build":"1772158"
},
"accountStatus":"VERIFIED"
}

@jdavid

Japan: Pay it Forward

I just sent this message to a friend in Japan. My hope is that others will do the same.

I was inspired by a few articles I had read about in the past about pastors giving money to the congregations members to do good in a community. I don’t know how my friend Jon will make use of the money but I trust he will slightly know better than I how to use it.

I figure that this $100 will work in different ways than the other money that I have sent to the relief effort via the Red Cross.

If I get a note back of how the money was used, I will update this post. Please let me know if you choose to do the same. #japan #payitforward

Jon, I am sending $100.00 to you in Japan, if you need the cash please use it. If you know of a way to leverage the money please do that. If you think someone else could make better use, pay it forward. Write back to tell me how you use it.

Cheers,
Justin

Paypal X Adaptive Pay FundingConstraint for PHP

The following code is an example of adding the FundingConstraint objects for a payRequest with Paypals new Adaptive Payments. I hope this helps.

$payRequest->fundingConstraint = new FundingConstraint();

//$payRequest
//    ->fundingConstraint
//    ->allowedFundingType
//    ->fundingTypeInfo
//    ->fundingType = "BALANCE";

$payRequest
    ->fundingConstraint
    ->allowedFundingType
    ->fundingTypeInfo
    ->fundingType = "ECHECK";

tumblr

I just started a tumblr account. As I test it out I may push more and more content there. It seems that tumblr has a crazy growth rate, and really provides some advantages for sharing ideas. Maybe wordpress just is not social enough to keep up.

If you have a tumblr account let me know, my tumblr account is http://jdavidnet.tumblr.com

Facebook as a Bank?

http://michaeldeshazer.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/the-yuri-milner-connect-how-facebook-will-become-a-bank/

This is a little bit of a leading argument but it seems to sum up external arguments.

I still have yet to rediscover where I saw that Facebook was filing to be a bank.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking
$2billion in cash can lend out $18billion in value.
@ 5% interest that’s $900 million a year in profit.
@ 10% that’s $1.8billion a year.
& that’s just on interest.

Facebook makes transactional profits too, so on $18billion in credits, I bet you could see $100 billion in transactions if they one day allowed peer to peer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax

Visa has about $2-3billion a quarter in revenue via their transaction fees.

Vid.ly Beta IE size bug work around

        var n = document.getElementById('vidly-wrapper');
        if( n != null && vidjs.prototype.isIe() ){
            vidjs.prototype.flashMarkup =
                        '<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="{width}" height="{height}">' +
                        '<param name="movie" value="http://vidly.dev.jentek.net/templates/js/player.swf"/>' +
                        '<param name="FlashVars" value="src={file}&skin=http://vidly.dev.jentek.net/skin.xml&scaleMode=none"><param name="AllowFullscreen" value="true"/>' +
                        '<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>'+
                            '</object>';
           vidjs.prototype.flashMarkup = vidjs.prototype.flashMarkup.replace("{width}", '610');
           vidjs.prototype.flashMarkup = vidjs.prototype.flashMarkup.replace("{height}", '360');
       
           n.parentNode.removeChild(n);
           new vidjs();
       }