BigBlueHat

A bite-sized case study of declaring fonts in a PDF document:

Zend_Pdf (from the makers of PHP no less):

$mainstyle = new Zend_Pdf_Style();
$mainstyle->setFont(Zend_Pdf_Font::fontWithName(Zend_Pdf_Font::FONT_HELVETICA), 9);

FPDF (open source project last updated 3 years ago):

$fpdf->SetFont(’Arial’,”,9);

FPDF wins.

There is an excellent series of startup related posts at AdaptiveBlue’s BlueBlog (found via ReadWrite/Web).

One thing I found confusing, though, was the recommendation in the infrastructure tips to use Google Analytics because of its API. Google Anayltics does not currently have an outbound API, though they do have a custom tracking API via ga.js (rather than urchin.js) [2]

The dashboard is customizable, but the only way to integrate your stats into another product or a centralized dashboard for all your sites is via a web-scrapping API (for CakePHP no less).

I’d love to see Google open up the analytics data we’re giving them, so we can present it elsewhere. There is Clicky and probably others, but Google’s done so much to “open” their infrastructure, it would be great to see them open this valuable source of data (that we’re providing them, no less). Perhaps Amazon could leverage their Alexa service offerings to create a more direct competitor.

The articles are good reads in any case.

“Comet is an umbrella term for any technique that allows a web server to “push” events down to a browser.” — Simon Wilson

Imagine web-based chat apps, calendars, and weather widgets that don’t poll the server ever ‘x’ seconds, but rather update only when notified by the server. That’ll save some bandwidth, certainly.

It’s certainly something we’re looking into. We’re already heavily (and happily) invested in AJAX technology, and I think Comet will be a nice addition for some new applications we have in the wings.

Well, Brad and I have successfully installed and upgraded (respectively) our laptops to Ubuntu 7.10. Overall the process was satisfying. There are a good bit of “nifty” features: visual effects (better than Vista, promise), window list reordering, and a new icon set. Additional in brings better power consumption management and restricted (non-open source) driver managing.

All told we’re happy with it. As with any upgrade the process, there were issues, but we’re both up and running now, and glad we made the move. If you’ve not tried Ubuntu, download a Live CD, restart your computer with it in your CD drive, and enjoy a harmless trial of the OS. You may be very glad you did.

Here at the BigBlueHat central industrial headquarters, we make use of the operating system of champions, Ubuntu. The next release hits this month, and if you haven’t yet tried Ubuntu as a supplement/replacement for Windoze, now is the time.

I won’t list all the advantages of this Linux distribution here—you can check out their site for the goods—but I’ll mention a few favorite features:

1. ease of installing software and keeping them all up to date
2. very quick boot-up time
3. development tools aplenty
4. free (open source) programs that do all the common tasks (internet, document editing, image editing, media playback, etc.)
5. snazzy effects without being a memory hog

Take the plunge, won’t you?