 Real-Time Search
Try out this little gem if you are a fan of Apple's SpotLight, soundex, or any other kind of
impatience technology. Using a cheap trick where I drew a separately id'ed div around
each search result, I was able use javascript to show/hide the divs based on what the
search box contained whenever its value changed, creating the illusion of searching
the database with every keystroke when really I was searching through the ids of the divs.
As usual, arrays saved the day.
Fake dynamic image creation
There are sites out there that offer search capabilities, and when I was redesigning the IT
department's website at susqu.edu I was prompted make a software/hardware search engine for the
lab computers, so a student could search for particular software or hardware and no exactly which
lab to go to. I thought I would break the trend and take it a step further.
My boss asked me to do this and then took two days off, and when he came back he had a dynamically
drawn map to help all the clueless freshman identify which lab went with which name. Using a plain
two-tone map as a base I dynamically dropped layers with cut-out highlighted buildings depending on what
labs were returned. Hovering over the labs drew up their name, and clicking on them took you to a detailed
list of all the hardware, software, and printers in the lab, as well as it's schedule.
Adjective-based organization
Adjectives are what we think with when we describe items, but when we organize databases we often
beat data and products into pre-defined archeology that just doesn't make any sense to the human
brain, and therefore we are forced to remember paths and locations that don't make any sense.
Promoted in part by the web standards committee's assertion that we should make "intelligible URIs",
and in part by the supposed file system of the supposed LongHorn, I have started laying out my
databases in a new way that doesn't pre-define anything.
PDF Printer Spool Archives
Many companies print out invoices or packaging slips or other various reports and then file them away,
accessing them whenever there is a question about what the document said. Often this data is still in the
database or mainframe. There are many $5000 and up software packages out there that will help a company
turn these literally metric tons of paper into several gigabytes of PDF or equivalent format, but the cost
is hard to justify when walking over to the cabinet doesn't appear to really cost anything. However, with
a spare computer and a developer's edition of ColdFusion a programmer can achieve the same result for free.
Dynaic Page Titles and Meta Tags
Prompted by several articles in both electric and print form, (Interface Tech News), that were about the importance
of key words in online marketing and free traffic herding, and built upon Adjective-based Organization,
I built hundreds of dynamic product pages out of one file and thousands of data entries. While query strings qualified
different urls, the database adjectives created specific, google-friendly meta tags a football field long, boosting
organic google search results, again, for free.
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myLnxFileServer
Linux machines are frequently used as file servers because they are low-cost, reliable, and
speak nfs fluently. System and samba config files are plain text and could easily be
administered by a website that could also offer itself as a low-overhead file manager.
On Task and Focused
An extension of my first product and service, the creatively titled "Online Project Management",
a cost-free small business project management website application that could run on any windows
computer, On Task is a project management webapp that is built for an individual, not a company
with multiple employees. It helps sense the pace of a project and the likeliness of timely completion,
along with the option to have managers view and/or prioritize projects as a
graphical, low-maintenance, and intuitive vehicle for employee-employer communication.
MyStalker/MyStocker.com
A side project that puffed out of existence, mystalker/mystocker.com is a project to make
one website that would keep track of, or stalk, all kinds of various things we go all over the
web for. Based largely on the idea of RSS feeds and stocks, the website would archive a wide
array of items for the user, so that they didn't have to stay compulsively current with 10 different
websites. The first item to stalk was stocks, via MyStocker.com. Next was going to be RSS feeds,
webcams, emails, weather, and who knows what.
ObjectDock
The coolest website menu, bar none, would have to be one that acted similar to Apple OS X's
Dock, or Stardock's Object Dock. This is freakin impossible, as far as I can see, without
requiring a plugin like flash.
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Weblab
