I don’t do this often, but I HAVE to recommend DigiCert for your SSL certificate needs.

First thing that caught my eye, price, they are directly comparable to GeoTrust. I used to get my certs from GeoTrust because I thought they were the cheapest, I found GoDaddy a while back but I really don’t like them. Their advertising is trashy and their site is littered with up-sell, I don’t use them unless I have to.

Second thing that impressed me was the breadth of the tutorials that their site has for certificate related actions. Installation, removal, backup, update on every type of server software I have ever heard of. Video tutorials too, top-notch really.

Third, about 5 minutes after I ordered the certificate I got a phone call from a human being verifying that I did indeed order the certificate and if I had any questions on installing it. No up-sales, just proactive support, this is rare anymore.

Fourth and final, The administrative panel to manage my certs is super easy to use. It does only what you need and does it well.

Alright, so anyone that knows me fairly well knows I enjoy coding Javascript more than most other languages.. Unfortunately, about 99% of what I code isn’t appropriate for posting to the web or else I would probably have my own Javascript library by now. I have a problem abstracting my code enough to generally useful, usually its hyper-specialized to do one thing very quickly, different story through, back on topic…I am ranting here.

Many popular Javascript libraries/frameworks make extensive use of the dollar symbol ($). Great, no problem, cool, its fun to do this in jQuery to get a reference to an element by its ID through CSS selectors:

$("#divID")

I won’t go into the other frameworks, since my point is this. Yes, the ECMAscript spec says:

7.6 Identifiers
…
This standard specifies specific character additions: The dollar sign ($) and the underscore (_) are permitted anywhere in an identifier.
…

So this is perfectly valid:

var the$subvar = "hello";

Valid…yes, recommended NO!

If you have ever had to dig through code that intersperses usage of the dollar function and dollar Identifier you find you quickly start to go cross eyed and begin mumbling while posting a rant to your website…

I have been reading comparisons between Windows Live and Google Docs. Before I had ever tried Windows Live it had sounded like it was a major contender to Google Docs. Let me put these reviews to rest. Windows Live does NOT fill the same niche as Google Docs or Zoho for that matter.

Windows Live is nothing more than an online storage container for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents. You must have Office installed to be able to edit documents. Sure they have a snazzy way to open a template that saves all your changes back to you Windows Live account, but thats it. No ActiveX controls that create an online Word/Excel application where I can create/edit/modify my documents. So thanks but no-thanks Microsoft, you once again showed us that you want nothing more than to funnel people to your overpriced, bloated software.

I have been waiting for this since it was first rumored in mid-2007 as Google Gears was just released. Now I can still read my GMail, and search, while my lappy and I are out of net coverage. (yes, yes, its rare..) Here is a link to the GMail Blog entry about it.

Alright, so I just updated to WordPress 2.7 and I must say that this team never fails to impress. The new admin interface is nothing but sexy. I don’t know how else to describe it. The totally redesigned it from the 2.6 series, which was a total redesign from the previous…but at least they keep moving forward. So yeah, upgrade if you haven’t already, its mostly painless and the upgrades make the 5 minutes you spend updating it worth it.

I stumbled across Longtail a while back for playing video on the web. ( http://www.longtailvideo.com ) Originally I would just upload it to YouTube then embed that video. But the problem with YouTube is that at the end of the video they list a whole bunch of “related” videos. That is all well and fine until the “related” videos get a bit too racy or go against the message you are trying to convey on the site. The player supports any codec that Adobe Flash player supports (FLV, MP4, MP3, AAC, JPG, PNG and GIF). So if you have the bandwidth this is a pretty good option.

I have been looking for a CMS solution that I can implement to my freelance clients that doesn’t deluge them in options. Most of the people I build website for just need something simple, edit some text and upload a picture or two. Most of the CMS tools out there have so many extra features that even the most experienced web developer gets a headache trying to decipher what they all mean.

I recently found CMS From Scratch. Its recently open sourced and fits what I need perfectly. It gives me a basic content management system, and I can give restricted access to clients for them to update their information. It maybe way too light-weight for any power users that feel features == usability. For those of use that know better, well I fits the bill quite nicely for a light weight CMS.

On a different note, WordPress 2.5 is now in release candidate, and its looking really nice! From everything they have changed they should have just called it WordPress 3.0. The dashboard has totally changed, and they have integrated a sweet gallery manager. I for one can’t wait for the final release, I will be upgrading this site when they do!