02
Jun 11

WP Plugin – Google Plus One Button


Yesterday Google released the Google +1 Button on the internet, today I release my latest Word Press Plugin : Google Plus One Button

Simple to install and configure yet flexible enough to be customized to fit in to your blog’s theme.

Get more info here or download it here


18
May 11

Building a Mobile App with PhoneGap (Part 1)


About a week ago my friend/coworker Daniel and I started discussing learning Java so that we could build Android apps. I threw the idea out on Twitter, figuring it’s tougher to quit when you’ve got a group of people to answer to the response was why not try Phone Gap. I had heard of Phone Gap, but I had never really checked it out. A few hours later I had the SDK installed and the “Hello World” script running in the Android Emulator.

Now what I needed is an easy project to cut my teeth on and figure out how to create/deploy Apps with Phone Gap. While driving to a meeting with the rest of the BlogathonATX crew it hit me that an app for BlogathonATX would be just the project I was looking for. I floated the idea and the team was psyched, but what next? I’ve never build or designed a mobile app before. Where do you start? Then I realized you start where every development project starts by figuring out what the thing is going to do ( Fancy term for this is “requirements gathering” ). Here is the list I came up with:

  1. Show Tweets by @blogathonatx
  2. Show Tweets using the Hashtag #blogathonatx
  3. Show the latest posts from the “News” category on BlogathonATX.com
  4. Show a schedule of upcoming BlogathonATX and Blounge events.
  5. Show the schedule of a specific event. ( Suggested by our fearless leader Ilene. )
  6. Show an ad from a sponsor ( Suggested by Blair and Haley our tireless PR and Sponsorship peeps. )

Now that I had a solid list of requirements I needed to figure out how I was going to arrange the content on the pages starting with the Home Screen. My goal was to create something clean, simple and easy to navigate. At the same time I was also messing around with jQuery Mobile which provides a pretty standard mobile app look and feel.

This is a screen shot of the original layout using jQuery Mobile:

While I thought it was cool that I was able to create something that looked very native I was also thinking “Why does it have to look so plain?”. After a bit of brain storming I came up with an idea that I sketched out ( horribly ) using my iPad:

With my sketch as a guide I started to create a mockup in HTML. I did some research on standard sizes for mobile app ads and picked the 320px x 50px banner as the ad size for the Home Screen.

The resulting HTML Mockup:

My next step is to finish the home page so all the links work. Then I’ll test it in the emulator and on Daniels Droid X.

Stay Tuned for Part 2!

– Jeremy


25
Feb 11

Guest blog post at ThePRChannel.com


I provided some Word Press assistance to the ladies over at ThePRChannel.com as they were getting the site up and running. When they launched they asked me if I’d write a guest blog post and here is the result: “Simple Steps to Creating a Professional Blog“ It was a fun exercise since I don’t do much writing and would love to do more in the future. Hopefully they will have be back again soon.


20
Dec 10

I’m attending the LAUNCH conference!


Last week Jason Calacanis ( @jason ) tweeted  ”Giving another LAUNCH ticket away today. Suggest a launch: I want @COMPANYNAME to @launch a new product/feature at http://www.launch.is” I tweeted that I would like to see HubVine launch at LAUNCH and went about my day. When I got home from work I saw these two replies on Twitter:

Needless to say I was pretty floored. I am now officially registered to attend the LAUNCH conference and I am in the process of making my travel arrangements. All I can say is I am super excited to be attending LAUNCH and I am looking forward to seeing some great new companies get launched! I will definitely be blogging and tweeting from the conference which is Feb 23-24, 2011.

– Jeremy


16
Nov 10

Girl Talk releases “All Day”…


Girl Talk, the alter ego of DJ Gregg Michael Gillis, released “their” 5th album “All Day” on Nov. 15th for free download.

I haven’t had a chance to listen to all 71 minutes of “All Day”, but what I’ve heard so far is on par with what we’ve come to expect from Girl Talk. That being said I don’t think it will live up to the near perfection of “Feed the Animals”.