See it here.

Thanks guys!

I am always looking for great tools to improve my web design and development experience and workflow. I found a great one recently that I’ve toyed with on the side, and am about to fully integrate into my design + development workflow: Jumpchart.

What I like

• It spits out clean code
  I can come out of the blocks less worried about my markup.
• Super simple export
  This was my biggest concern going in. I’m glad to see it implemented so elegantly.
• Price
  Very reasonable.

My concerns

• Will my less technical clients think that this is the actual website that I’m building and not just a model?
  In all fairness, this is probably more my problem than Jumpchart’s :-); it’s up to me to make this clear.
• Does it play nicely with CMS?
  I use CMS for most of my clients (WordPress, Joomla, SilverStripe, Textpattern). That nice, clean code that Jumpchart gives me to build upon could quickly turn to rubbish if using one of these systems. I think that a nice thing to have here would be something that would take the XHTML and make it translatable into a theme for a CMS. Hopefully the Jumpchart guys can help me out with this :-).

All in all, I think that this is a really solid offering, providing a fresh way for me and my clients to think about the most important parts of a website: the content and its flow.

nContxt is a mobile interface for 37signals‘ Highrise contact manager. It works on iPhones. It works on Windows Mobile phones, non-smartphones. It works on any phone with a web browsers. It’s free for the first week, and then $5/month.

Here are some screenshots (more here):

After logging in, you can search your contacts (people and companies). You also see a list of upcoming tasks and their associated party:

Searching for a person/company will display a list of results:

Clicking on a name shows the info for a person…

…or a company.

You can drill down to see more info.

As you’d expect, the phone numbers are nice and clickable (we are on a mobile :-)) , as are the email addresses and websites.

Using the SimpleHighrise PHP API, nContxt generates compact, XHTML Strict pages that render flawlessly on mobile browsers. This is an answer to the call for a mobile version of Highrise.

nContxt: The right things. The right time. Try it today. It’s free for the first week, and then $5/month.

More on it here.

Earlier this year, I read The 4-Hour Work Weekby Tim Ferriss. The book was an excellent read that really challenged my notions of work and life.

Admittedly, I’ve been reluctant and a little afraid to go head-first with some of the suggestions. One however, I’ve implemented and stuck with with much success: setting email expectations.

Whenever someone emails me, this is the auto-response that they get:

Subject: Garlin will respond at 11 AM PDT

Hello, and thanks for contacting me.

I check and respond to email daily at 1100 AM Pacific. If your message is an FYI or does not ask a question, please do not expect a response. If it contains a specific question or request, I will respond at 1100 AM Pacific the next day.

If you truly have an urgent need or request that can’t wait until 11 AM the following day, call me at (555) 555-5555.

Thanks!

This was suggested in Tim’s book as a way to set people’s expectations of when/how they should email you, and it works.

• I am getting much more focused emails sent my way that are more valuable to me.
• I am getting better feedback on the emails I send people because my responses are much more targeted.
• I now check & respond to email only once per day

I’ve also been using the Five Sentences methodology when writing emails, and that’s been great for my piece of mind.

These two tools have greatly increased my productivity, communication, and effectiveness. I encourage you to give them a try for yourself.

I have just began using some of the products from 37signals, including Ta-da List, Backpack, and Highrise (I also have a dormant Basecamp account).

Today I’d like to announce the first of many coding projects I’ll be posting at Activist Nerd: SimpleHighrise. This was inspired SimpleBackpack, the PHP wrapper class for Backpack, and much of the underlying utility code remains intact.

Download

SimpleHighrise.php, vAlpha

SimpleHighrise.php, vBeta

SimpleHighrise.php, vGamma

Disclaimer

This code comes no warranty, so use it at your own risk

What it doesn’t do [yet]

• Error checking/handling
• Update operations on objects listed in the Highrise API

What it does do

On all objects listed in the Highrise API:

• Show
• List
• Create
• Destroy

Please try it out and let me know any problems, issues, or ideas about SimpleHighrise!

Sample Usage

The following code instantiates a SimpleHighrise object. $result will hold the raw XML for all of the people the user can see:

include('simplehighrise.php');
$token = "token".":foo"; // tack on : (colon) and dummy password
$hr = new SimpleHighrise('user', $token);
$result = $hr->list_people();
echo $result;
Just as in SimpleBackpack, in order to return SimpleXML, do the following:

include('simplehighrise.php');
$token = "token".":foo";
$hr = new SimpleHighrise('username', $token, 'simplexml');

I’ll be adding to this as time progresses.

Update (24 Sep 2007): I posted vGamma, which has the following changes:

• Error handling: returns -1 if no results are returned from an op or if an op fails
• Better case support
• Miscellaneous bug fixes in handling different data types

Update (16 Aug 2007): I posted vBeta, which has the following changes:

• Added ability to return results as an array, using code from here. Here is an example:include('simplehighrise.php');
$token = "token".":foo";
$hr = new SimpleHighrise('username', $token, 'array');
• Fixed search_people() and search_companies() to be able to return multiple people/companies (before, it was written to only return the1st person/company.
• Miscellaneous bug fixes.

I’ve been wanting to start this site for a while. It always fascinates me how God has you do stuff only when it makes sense in the grand scheme. That can be a tough pill to swallow for the impatient.

The Activist Nerd is about me, Garlin Gilchrist II, part Nerd, part Activist, all Black man. I’ll share all three facets of my split-personality here, from code to campaigns to racial discourse. If those sound disconnected, you must not have met me yet.

Enjoy.

More here.