Each poll has its own page, for example here’s a poll i created: Visit Poll the bar graph is generated using basic CSS and PHP to determine the percentages for the number of votes. Here’s a tutorial I wrote a while back on how to implement a similar graph

The Design

Much like wedeliver I wanted to create an appealing interface that’s easy on the eye, simple to navigate as well as containing all the functionality needed.

Visit the site

You can visit the site here and create a poll yourself. As I said in my post about wedeliver as a designer and developer it’s really important to do personal projects as well as freelance work you learn so much more building small applications in your own time.

Its got to the stage where I can no longer read Mashable or Techcrunch because of the saturation and influence that these so called ‘social media’ experts and journalists seem to be having on the industry. This so called next movement has unfortunately made everyone (even my Mum and Dad!) an expert in social media (whatever social media really is?) so it seems. I used to be an avid reader of Mashable and Techcrunch however i started to notice articles that were just plain crap observations, for example recently i found this post on Mashable, ‘The top ten Twitter trends this week.’ I mean WHAT THE HELL! This made it into an article! This is a classic example of so called social media biting itself in the ass. Im a savvy internet user if i want to know what’s trending on Twitter i’ll check the Twitter homepage. Social media really just stands for, ‘We’re going to make your browsing experience twice as complicated by bombarding you with pointless facts an figures and plain obvious tips on how to promote your business using Twitter, Facebook and social networking.’ I mean HELLO! bands and teenagers have been doing this stuff for years on MySpace, Hi5, and Bebo its nothing new.

It’s just plain marketing bullshit, and it just purports to makes anyone an expert if you have a Twitter or Facebook account, so in effect it just bastardises people who actually are knowledgeable in this area. I don’t class myself as an expert in anything. If your an expert you have nothing more to learn and we all have something to learn even more so on the internet.

Social Media = Way too much noise!

The Design

Once the basic concept was established I started with a brand and logo, I had already decided on the name ‘We Deliver’ so I chose a typeface and style and developed the brand for the site. The logo and type very much influenced the tone of voice for the project. Minimalist, modern, with a simple user experience.

Visit the site

You can check out the site here. Im always inspired by the fun mini projects that Carsonified do as well as other viral campaigns like the work of Poke London. As a designer and developer I think it’s important to challenge yourself sometimes and it’s the best way to learn new techniques. I’ve never built an e-commerce site before not that this project is, however it gave me an insight into using jQuery to calculate the number of products as well as dynamically working out the exchange rate to show the total price in GBP.

Why is it good?

It has several advantages over using the Google translate widget the main one being that TranslateThis processes the page right on the page in front of you without redirecting you to Google. Secondly its customisable allowing you to add specific languages to the initial drop down and change the button as well as add your own Google analytics code to track which languages are popular. You can even disable the cookie that the plugin drops so it only translates one page at a time rather than automatically changing the language to your preferred setting.

I think this is a great piece of code that can easily translate your site, the code it both lightweight and optimised and comes in at a little under 19kb’s in size. It’s of course compatible with all major browsers including IE6, 7 and 8, FireFox, Safari and Chrome The code will gracefully degrade to any previous browsers.

For example. I’m not the kind of guy to blow my own trumpet, and I realise I’m not as experienced as others. However on a few occasions I’ve recently felt like saying to people “I told you so” when things go wrong. It seems I’m the wrong side of 30. Being young and trustworthy in this sector just don’t go too well together or rather people sideline me believing that they know the answers without even asking.

As this article points out “it’s often the young who suffer ageism most acutely in the office not the old.” It’s a hard game of tug of war. Trying to assert authority in ones given field at such an early point in your career can look like a vertical challenge to say the least.

From what i’ve learnt you have to be pretty thick skinned to succeed and not let it get you down. Young people starting out are vulnerable and often exploited in the workplace, payed a pittance. I respect under graduates that leave university thinking they will be handed a job only to find before they can even start to earn a living they need to often work for free or very little on an internship. Luckily i was scared of this prospect as early as my second year in university and crazily applied for a full time web developer role. This worked out quite well for me as they we’re flexible enough to be able to accommodate my education. Then at the beginning of my final year I got a job at MySpace.com where i am today. There was no way i was prepared to leave university and be flung on the jobless pile with so many talented academics.

It’s a shame we live in a society where media is perceived as a young persons field, although it’s the big cats that are pulling in the good jobs and the under 30′s struggle in such a competitive arena to make their voices heard.

I’d be interested to hear what you feel about this topic. These are just my thoughts.

Didn’t Win?

EasyPHPWebsites.com has provided PaperMashup readers with a special discount price of just $17.50 (£10.55) for the e-book version of “Easy PHP Websites with the Zend Framework”. Use the discount code papermashup when checking out at EasyPHPWebsites.com.

“Easy PHP Websites with the Zend Framework” shows you how to use the powerful Zend Framework to build websites with amazing speed and efficiency. Embracing a teaching strategy of learning by doing, showing you how to build website features you’ll actually want to use within your own websites. Among other topics you’ll learn how to manage data submitted through web forms, send e-mail through your website (both text and HTML), manage the user registration, login, and password recovery processes, and even create a simple social network. With free books updates for the life of the project, and access to almost five hours of companion video, “Easy PHP Websites with the Zend Framework” is the ultimate guide to the Zend Framework!

Just want to say a big thanks to Jason Gilmore over at Easy PHP Websites for allowing me to give away three of his amazing books! Hopefully we will run more comps in the future.

A key tool for any budding web developer is API knowledge. It’s good to familiarise yourself with a variety of application interfaces. I started out using the Twitter REST API with PHP and CURL when twitter first launched the API to basically get a users tweets, pretty simple now I look back, but at the time it was the first time i’d done such a thing. As the development of social media continues this will increasingly open up opportunities to develop more and more applications that interact with one another and and make our daily chores more eventful.

Frameworks

There’s generally a framework for just about every programming language out there. Whether you decide to learn the jQuery framework for JavaScript or Cake for PHP each one will help you succeed as a freelancer and further your career as a web developer. Frameworks in many respects take out the arduous repetitive tasks we face daily and give us more time to focus on developing cutting edge products or applications.

iPhone Applications

Companies are Increasingly seeing the massive potential that there is in the mobile platform. Applications that are approved and make it into the Apple app store have the opportunity to be downloaded thousands of times and can potentially make a lot of money. Having a specific skill to be able to develop for this market can be very lucrative, especially in the current economic climate when companies are turning to social media to plug holes where they’re not seeing return on investment from other advertising sectors.

CMS Customisation

A handy skill to have is a general knowledge of how to use content management systems. For example building themes and plugins for WordPress, or modules and components for Joomla and Mambo. As a developer its important to have an idea of the structure of a variety of CMS’s. If you have a wordpress blog/site, that’s an easy way to familiarise yourself with the platform. Remember it’s always easier to learn something by immersing yourself in the technology.

Online Payments

Businesses are always going to need payment solutions online. Having the skills to take a site and integrate paypal or google checkout will allow you to go far. We’re starting to see many 3rd party software companies setting up and selling software at more affordable prices, take Panic for example. They are a relatively small company that develop a selection of web development software for the mac. Many new startups are settling for a product based revenue stream rather than making money purely through ads, revenue share, or partnership deals. This opens up the demand for skilled developers to be able to build payment solutions.

Take Time To Learn

In order to get into your new programming language you need time and commitment to perfect your new skill. Take the time to spend a day learning rather than and hour here and an hour there, you’ll learn more this way. it took me about a week to get comfortable with jQuery. I use jQuery everyday so it was relatively easy to get to grips with as the learning process was continuous, however you need sleep so your brain can de-fragment everything you’ve learnt that day.

Buy a selection of books

The truth is you just can’t learn a programming language in 24hrs, some books purport to teach you the basics in 24hrs. I’ve never found these books useful. I’d recommend buying a selection of books for whichever language your learning and sit down and read the basics. You’ll find some books easier to read than others so pick your books carefully. Remember you won’t be able to learn everything from a book but it’s a great starting point to start to understand the logic.

Collect tutorials and demos

Start building up a folder of download demos that you can refer to and reverse engineer. I find this very useful, and still do it if i want a quick fix for a project. Reading tutorials on your specific language will also give you a better understanding. generally tutorials are short and sweet and give you all the info you need to know.

Bug fixing

It’s inevitable that your going to run into code errors. Don’t pull your hair out, we all go through it, work through the error and go back on yourself to find out what the problem was. If your building an application, don’t just code it all then test it. Test your code as you go along, then if you find an error you’ll quickly be able to identify the problem.

Using a feed from the BBC weather I’ve mashed up the data that i get from the temperature sensor with the weather feed to predict what the ‘weather’ will be like in my office. As a feature for my site (as i spend most of my time in my office) you can see what the weather’s like in my office at anytime by clicking the link in the menu at the top right of any page. We’re approaching winter over here in the UK so the temperature is dropping.

I thought it was a different way of displaying this kind of data by making it a bit fun, and you never know i may extend it in the future to include other aspects. I have a light sensor which is in full operation, which can be seen from the original mash-up here.

View The Latest Office Weather

If you want to read the article from Matt Harzewski titled 40+ Invaluable PHP Tutorials and Resources Check It Out Here

I haven’t been posting as regularly as i’d hoped as im working on a project that’s just eating all my time right now! But as soon as thats live i should be back with some mind numbing tutorials on PHP! yay