Setting up a Facebook "feed" on your website

OK, so our team regularly adds Twitter and Blog feeds to websites.  Often we get aksed to add a Facebook feed... thing is, Facebook is not really a "feed" as it's made up of posts and info from you and other users.  So to add the Facebook "stream" to your site, what you need to do is add a customised view of the "Like Box" social plugin.

To do this, follow the instructions on this page:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box/

Happy coding!

You Tube Poster Frames & Thumbnails

If you have ever uploaded a video to You Tube, you'll know that You Tube gives you three choices for a poster frame which is also used as the search thumbnail.  Google just calls them "video thumbnails" to make it easy I guess.  However if you embed your You Tube video on a website, the initial frame before video plays (Poster Frame) is also the thumbnail.

The thumbnail image can have a big impact on whether people actually click on your video in search results and also the look of your web page if embedded.  So how do these thumbnails work and can you modify them?

If you are a You Tube partner - you can now upload custom thumbnails... cool!  To become a partner, you need to enable monetization on your account... not so cool.  If you don't want to do that, then read on.

How to edit your video thumbnail:
1. Visit your account page
2. Click the Uploaded Videos
3. Select Video
4. Click on Edit
5. Click the thumbnail you want, and Update

How does You Tube select the thumbnail?
Well according to one website, it goes by a simple time formula:
X = Video length (in sec.)
Y = X divided by 4 or X/4 (in sec.)

Y is the 1st thumbnail.
2 times Y or 2xY (in sec.) is the 2nd thumbnail (poster frame).
3 times Y or 3xY (in sec.) is the 3rd thumbnail.

So it is possible to create your video with these time codes in mind and actually get a thumbnail and poster frame that is exactly what you want!

I will post an entry soon on You Tube Vs Vimeo!

Kill Deep Linking...

If you are using Word Press you not doubt are using plugins too... many of which have little foibles such as jQuery from prettyPhoto displaying extra info at end of your URL when you use a popover gallery or after closing it. To disable this, open your prettyPhoto.js file and set deep linking to false.

Also do this:

Replace: clearHashtag(){url=location.href;hashtag=(url.indexOf('#!prettyPhoto'))?true:false;if(hashtag)location.hash="!prettyPhoto";}

With: clearHashtag(){url=location.href;hashtag=(url.indexOf('#!'))?true:false;if(hashtag)location.hash="";}

No more "#!prettyPhoto" or other nonsense...

Enjoy!

Handy PHP Error Checking Tool

If you like me recently upgraded PHP, you will no doubt be wanting to do some error checking... but not just errors, deprecation warnings, notices etc... this quick tool helps you set and show exactly what you need...

http://www.bx.com.au/tools/ultimate-php-error-reporting-wizard

Leap Motion

What is this exactly???

Well - best described by it's developers... "This isn’t a game system that roughly maps your hand movements.  The Leap technology is 200 times more accurate than anything else on the market — at any price point. Just about the size of a flash drive, the Leap can distinguish your individual fingers and track your movements down to a 1/100th of a millimeter."

The possibilities for interactive displays is exciting!
Check out the video on their website.

Speed test your website!

Another useful tool form the folks at Googley...
Really only interesting if you are a developer.

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights

- Thanks Tom!

How do I clear my browser cache?

So many times we have clients ask us how to clear their browser cache. Well thanks to wikiHow, there is a handy page just about this. Although understandably they have not caught up to the latest Firefox version (who can keep up?), all the major browsers are covered.

Check it out: http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cache