In a group meeting today, someone pointed me at Prototype.
I’ve been thinking about Web 2.0 functionality for a while now and most of the great features on advanced sites use AJAX. Basically this is the idea of calling back to the server from script within a web page. This allows more interactive and statefull websites.
Typical of many free libraries, there is very little documentation. Just wanted to post a few great places that I found rather quickly:
I plan on using this library shortly.
Lately I’ve been working long hours on a side project. I’m trying to create a centralized management portal for small political campaigns and grassroots organizations. I feel there is a genuine need for a contact management solution due to my involvement with a few political think tanks and my father’s campaign for city council at-large in Lexington Kentucky.
It’s very much a work in progress, but the fruits of my labor are here www.orgplace.com.
Basically this is a spiffed up version of the management database I created for my dad. This same online tool was then utilized by two political think tanks.
The public website for my Steve Kay’s campaign can be found here www.kayforcouncil.com. It consists of a customized WordPress installation integrated with my own management database.
The public websites for the political organizations that have also utilized my system are listed below:
The Foreign Policy Leadership Council
Each of their implementations are simple contact management systems used for targeted communications to their subscribers and leaders.
One of my roles at the American Cancer Society is to manage the tools our division use for Constituent Relationship Management (CRM). I provide trainings, define business processes, and support the field in using our CRM tools. This task has proven to be very difficult, with the biggest obstacles coming from the CRM domain in general.
Everyone in my division practices Constituent Relationship Management. They must, or they would not be successful in their jobs. The question is whether they are performing their CRM tasks efficiently or would they be able to accomplish more if they were to use the tools available to them.
A standard problem in the CRM domain is ‘User Adoption’. I can speak from experience that this is the fundamental problem with all CRM tools. Until the tools are able to integrate completely and seamlessly with mail and calendar applications, only the most sales driven professionals will use them.
I recently stumbled upon a very interesting article by Charles Petzold explaining how sophisticated tools can actually limit our creativity.
The text can be found here. I have had similar thoughts in the past, but his examples and argument are very well founded.
I have been programming for over 12 years, and have used all kinds of tools from simple text editors to full featured Integrated Development Environments (IDE) like Visual Studio .NET. While I find the sophisticated features of heavier tools to be time saving, sometimes I prefer to do my editing in notepad.
Now that I only program as a hobby, I am pulled toward open source languages and tools. Typically the tools used to develop in open source technologies lack many of the features found in complete IDEs. While I miss a few of the features in Visual Studio .NET, it has been refreshing and mind-sharpening to go back to the tools on which I learned to program in Pascal and ANSI C.
Most of my work these days is in PHP, and my development environment consists of a glorified text editor with syntax highlighting and FTP client.
It's a little slower but I know I have complete control over my projects.
Zacarias Moussaoui has literally asked for the death penalty. The prosecution fumbled badly in their attempt to implicate Moussaoui in the planning and execution of the attacks on 9/11, but Moussaoui’s own testimony has re-opened the possibility for capital punishment.
Personally, I am against the death penalty. I don’t believe any governing body should have the right to take a human life. Anyone given the harshest sentence possible should have a lifetime to overturn that sentence.
Regardless of my personal beliefs, I think it is important to punish Moussaoui and Al Queda for their criminal acts. I don’t want to give Moussaoui what he wants, and in this case, he wants to be a martyr. It would be a far graver punishment to sentence him to life in prison.
