Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

Have you ever thought of building an extension or pulling contents from other websites which have not got RSS feeds or API available? Dapper is a service that allows you to extract and use information from any website on the Internet. For those familiar with web services, you can think of Dapper as an API maker. For the rest of you, Dapper allows you to build web applications and mashups using data from any website without any programming.

Dapper is really easy to use. During the beta, Dapper is free and open to all. In the future, non-commercial and small uses will remain free. Dapper works on the HTML of any web page. It does not currently work with XML, Flash, or Javascript. If a web page has a Javascript contained within, the Javascript sections will simply be disabled, but you will be able to work with the rest of the page.

However, Dapper’s users have the sole obligation to respect the copyrights of content they use from the web. Dapper will not be held liable for any sort of copyright infrigement, and will immediately comply with any verified request by the lawful owner of the content to cease using his content.

Source: http://www.dapper.net/

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OpenDNS is the world’s most intelligent DNS service. Their global network and their software work together symbiotically to offer a set of features custom-tailored to you, without requiring you to buy any hardware or install any software.

They have built a self-healing network across two continents to give you the most reliable DNS service. They use multiple carriers at every site to ensure full redundancy of our Internet bandwidth. That bandwidth then feeds into a cluster of servers, which is constantly balancing the load across itself so your DNS request is answered in the fastest way possible. They do this for you and every one of our customers, about 30,000 times per second and growing.

OpenDNS operates PhishTank.com, the most accurate and timely source of phishing data on the Web. They protect you from phishing scams by blocking the fraudulent sites from resolving on your network by incorporating PhishTank directly into our system. And it is Free!

Source: http://www.opendns.com/

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iA has presented us with the 2008 Web Trend Map, in all its beautiful beta glory. This time they have taken almost 300 of the most influential and successful websites and pinned them down to the greater Tokyo-area train map. By popular demand, they enlarged the poster size from A3 to A0.

iA has spent so much time on making this wonderful and detailed Web Trend Map. I think this looks really good and it is a good idea to set it as your wallpaper, or even put the poster on the wall of your home or office. There is a Big, A3 PDF and Clickable online version to play with as well.

Source: http://www.formforce.com/web-trend-map-2008-beta/

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Collis Ta’eed has written a very nice article on Digital Web Magazine about Creating The Perfect Portfolio. An online portfolio is very important to a freelancer. Your portfolio will be looked at without you present, without any other information about you. If your portfolio has to stand alone in a critical situation like hiring, it’s worth spending some time making sure it’s going to get the job done.

Collis shares with us some of his observations and opinions—particularly from the viewpoint of an employer—on how to approach the task of building an online portfolio. The article is very detailed and well-written, it has also featured some of the best portfolio examples on the internet. Read the article carefully, you will learn a lot from it.

Source: http://www.digital-web.com/articles/the_perfect_portfolio

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FreelanceSwitch which has over 17,000 readers, has released their first FreelanceSwitch book which covers everything from getting started to expanding your business. The book is called How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer which is written by Collis & Cyan Ta’eed – the founders of the site – it’s packed with new information, advice and insights not covered on the blog.

The book with 212 Pages of Expert Freelancing Advices is available now for $29 only.

Source: Grab Your Copy Now

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David Greiner from Vitamin explains what you need to do to ensure that your emails not only look great in today’s email clients but also actually make it to where they’re going. Getting your email to look good is only one piece of the puzzle, so he has dedicated the second half of this article to recommendations on how you can improve the chances of your emails actually getting delivered. This article is really well written and useful, you should not miss it if you would like your clients / readers can read your emails properly.

View the full article on Ensuring your HTML emails look great and get delivered.

Source: http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/ensuring-your-html-emails…

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Blog Perfume is similar to WebAppers which provides the best resources for people. However, unlike WebAppers, Blog Perfume concentrates on providing the best blogging resources for bloggers. Blog Perfume collects high quality and actually useful WordPress Themes, WordPress Plugins and other Blogging Tools for bloggers.

If you are running a blog or multiple blogs, please have a look, you may find someting useful especially if you are running WordPress Blogs. It is no harm to subscribe to the RSS Full Feed, because Blog Perfume is updated regularly.

Source: http://www.blogperfume.com/

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When we are buiding a website or web application with the use of javascript. We have to make sure most of the people can view or use the website or web application properly. Therefore, we need to make sure we implement JavaScript in an unobtrusive manner. So that users would still be able to use it when javascript is disabled.

Christian Heilmann has found the following rules over the years developing, teaching and implementing JavaScript in an unobtrusive manner. They have specifically been the outline of a workshop on unobtrusive JavaScript for the Paris Web conference 2007 in Paris, France.

• Do not make any assumptions
• Find your hooks and relationships
• Leave traversing to the experts
• Understand browsers and users
• Understand Events
• Play well with others
• Work for the next developer

View the full article on The seven rules of Unobtrusive JavaScript.

Source: http://icant.co.uk/articles/seven-rules-of-unobtrusive-javascript/

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Over 1 million people and businesses are using Campfire’s web applications to get things done in a simple way. They have elegant and thoughtful products that do just what you need. But how do they make such great products? 37signals are going to show you something behind the scenses.

This “Behind the scenes” post aim to show you how they work and all the little things that they get done in Campfire every day. They picked one week in September and took screenshots of some of our key interactions. This “Behind the scenes” post focuses on design. I am sure it will help us when designing our web applications.

Read the full article on Behind the scenes at 37signals: Design

Requirements: N/A
Source: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/681-behind-the-scenes-at-37signals-design
License: N/A

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The Official Google PageRank Update has just happened yesterday. WebAppers has got a mixture of PR5 and PR4 from PR0 in most datacenter. Apparently Google has penalized WebAppers for selling Text Link Ads which I have stopped selling for a month already.

Check Your PageRank here
CheckPageRank.com
PageRank Checker from iWebTool
SmartPageRank.com

What To Do If You Are Penalized By Google
If you see a different PR on different datacenter as well, you probably are being penalized by Google for selling Text Link Ads. If you would like to get your PageRank back, you can go to Google Webmaster Tools and request a reconsideration by clicking on “Request reconsideration” after removing your Text Link Ads and stop selling them from now on.

This Google PageRank Update Does Not Make Any Sense
I am happy with the PageRank of WebAppers, I think I can get a firm PR5 back if I have requested a reconsideration. However, I think there is something wrong with this PageRank Update, because there are some REALLY popular websites are getting ridiculous low PageRank. For example, Forbes.com has got a PR4, YouTube has got a PR3. And Showcase Point is a one month old site which has got less than 50 backlinks has got a PR5 from PR0! I cannot really figure out the logic behind it.

We cannot trust PageRank anymore, what is Google thinking about? Or is it just simply because the PageRank update is still in process, the PageRank of all websites are not valid and unstable at the moment?

What did you get for your websites? Are you happy with it? Are you feeling confused as well?

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