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AmpliFeeder Preview

Mark Krynksy over at lifestreamblog.com has written a fantastic preview of my new open source lifestreaming platform: AmpliFeeder  that pretty much sums the project up entirely. The plan is to get the self hosted version to release a quickly as possible with the other versions ( including the hosted version ) rolling out towards the summer.

Mark provided me with some invaluable feedback that has pushed the release back a little, but the app will be so much better for it. From a technical point of view, the initial release is 90% jQuery and only 10% ASP.NET so knocking out alternate platform versions will be a breeze. I’ll keep this site updated with developments as they break but if you want to contact me instantly I’m always on Twitter @jonpauldavies. Here are a few more exclusive screen shots of what is to come.

JQuery Pager Plugin

I’ve just knocked together a JavaScript pager for use in an application I’m working on and thought it may be of use to other people. I’ve therefore converted it to a jQuery plugin and released it under joint MIT and GPL licenses and it is entirely free for you to use or mess about with.

You can see a demonstration of it in action at http://jonpauldavies.github.com/JQuery/Pager/PagerDemo.html and visit my GitHub repository at http://github.com/jonpauldavies/jquery-pager-plugin/tree/master to download it.

Usage is very simple indeed. You just give it the number of pages to view, the current page, and a callback method to fire when the pager gets clicked.

Amazon.Com Addiction Continues Unabated….

I pay a quick visit to Amazon to get Kitty a few books and before you know it I’ve dropped an extra 70 quid on 3 JavaScript / JQuery books….

I have not had time to review them fully, but JQuery in Action is a thorough trawl through the functionality and use cases of this continually impressive library. I’ve got a pretty firm grasp of JQuery but my entire knowledge is built from blog posts so felt I needed something a bit more solid and this seems to fit the bill.

The JQuery Reference is very thin for a technical book and has yet to prove it’s worth now that we have decent JQuery intellisense in Visual Studio. I’ll have to wait and see how it pans out.

Lastly, Pro JavaScript Techniques is an overview of the ‘modern’ uses of the language, and how it has adopted several OOP paradigms as true client side development has matured in recent years.
If you are thinking of putting any of these on your Christmas list, I’d order them JQuery in Action, Pro JavaScript Techniques and The JQuery Reference – in order of usefulness.