jQuery Radio Buttons

Posted on January 26, 2011 by Steven Weathers

During a work project I was asked to hide elements of a form based on the value’s of checked radio buttons using jQuery.  The trick with radio button sets is that they share a name attribute, which makes targeting each set a slightly easier task.  Below is the code I came up with, of course with element names changed to something generic.

$("input[name='radio']").change(function(){
	if ($("input[name='radio']:checked").val() == 'Yes') {
		//if yes do something here such as show
	}
	else {
		//if no do something here such as hide
	}
});
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Social Media and Small Businesses

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Steven Weathers

Over the passed few years social media services such as Facebook and Twitter have grown at insane rates, and with it small businesses are finding it almost a necessity to promote their business on these services.  Some of the major social media services that local businesses have to consider are Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, Google Places, Groupon, Living Social, and Yelp.  On top of those Ebay is a very important service for certain types of businesses, such as jewelry shops and automotive restoration shops.  What makes things even more interesting is new and upcoming services such as Google Offers, and the Google Facebook competitor in the works.

Personally I see Facebook and Google Places as the two most important sites to maintain a presence on, with Groupon and Twitter following closely.  I believe the younger generations are also prone to Foursquare and Gowalla for location based services.  As far as services like LinkedIn, I believe they are geared toward professional’s and job seekers, not really a consumer.  Finally you have video services such as YouTube and Vimeo, which I believe are great depending on the type of business and how they are used to promote that business.

The major issue with this is that not every business has the time or resources to maintain a presence on all of those.  This is where I believe marketing agency‘s such as Miller Davis in Salisbury North Carolina really shine, on top of their website development and print work.  If you feel I have left out any social media services that should be considered by small businesses, please feel free to leave a comment.

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Motorola Bionic and Xoom

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Steven Weathers

As most would guess, I’m currently keeping up with news related to CES Las Vegas 2011. From one of my favorite tech new sources Wired comes news of two new Motorola Android products to be hitting Verizon this year.

First off the Motorola Bionic Android smart phone, a beautiful 4.3 inch screen, dual core Nvidia processor, 16gb on-board storage, and a back facing 8 mega-pixel camera. Whats also different about this new phone is that instead of going for a sleek surface on its back, its got a rubberized grip feel, making this a lot less likely to drop.

Second, and probably more interesting is the new Motorola Xoom Android tablet, a sleek 10.1-inch widescreen HD display, 1-GHz dual-core processor, Android 3.0 also known as Honeycomb, a 2-megapixel front facing camera for video chat capability and a rear facing 5-megapixel camera, which captures 720p video. At launch the Motorola Xoom will only be 3G and WiFi connected, however those who get one of these lovely toys early on will be able to send it off to Motorola to be upgraded to 4G.

Personally I’m enjoying my Motorola Droid (1st Generation), however I’ve been planning to upgrade to a more powerful Android sometime in 2011, from the looks of it my choice is going to be the Motorola Bionic. I’ve also been planning to purchase an Android Tablet when they come out with a proper one on Honeycomb, so now it looks like the beautiful Motorola Xoom is going to be my first choice. Sadly one downside about Verizon‘s 4G LTE is that it’s only setup in a few dozen major cities (even Charlotte) which means for me in Concord, and working hours in Salisbury I won’t have the luxury of the 4G speeds until Verizon extends their 4G LTE networks.

Wired Original Articles for Motorola Bionic and Motorola Xoom.

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Tynt Insight

Posted on December 29, 2010 by Steven Weathers

I’ve recently come a crossed a few websites with a feature that intrigued me.  What is this feature you ask?  Well I found that when copy & pasting text/content from said websites, for instance sentences from news articles, that the website added a Read More and the page link to the copy contents.  After some research I found a service known as Tynt Insight that does a couple of interesting things: it tracks user engagement on your site by tracking copy and paste activity and automatically adds a link back to your content when it is pasted somewhere else.  Best of all Tynt Insight is completely free and easy to use.

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Media Temple now has a CDN

Posted on December 28, 2010 by Steven Weathers

My current and favorite hosting company Media Temple (mt) has just released a new product called ProCDN.  ProCDN is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that helps push content around the world from servers that are closer to the visitor.  This could be very useful for sites that get a lot of International traffic, especially sites heavy on imagery or videos.  Currently none of my projects would really benefit from such a wonderful product, however I don’t doubt there may come a time when I will want this feature.

More information can found at Media Temple’s Blog post.

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Traveling Social Media

Posted on December 19, 2010 by Steven Weathers

Recently I started getting bigger on social media, and one thing I’ve been doing more this year is traveling and vacations.  I came a crossed two possible traveling related social media sites, the first and my personal favorite being Gowalla.  Gowalla is great because not only does it allow you to check in, but it also allows for creation of “trips”.  Trips in Gowalla are a combination of check in’s, for instance Disney created trips that involve checking in related rides and events to earn a badge.  The second traveling social media site is Foursquare, which I hear is the most known, but I feel not as well developed as Gowalla.  The great thing about Foursquare though is it allows businesses to add special deals, such as a restaurant can add a free appetizer code for every check in.  This complicates my usage, as each site having an advantage caused me to use both while on vacation at Walt Disney World Resort.  Thankfully both Gowalla and Foursquare have apps for Android, which made checking in at each Disney World ride or restaurant a breeze.

You may find links to my Gowalla and Foursquare pages on the Contact page sidebar under Social Networking.

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