The vibrating mechanism used in silent mode on my old 1g iPhone has been getting flaky over the past month or so and I’ve been missing calls. Needless to say, it’s gotten a lot of use and abuse over the last 2–ish years since I almost always keep it in silent mode. To coax it into buzzing again I tried doing a number of things including software restore, shaking it, speaking to it in a really calm voice and even coddling it (I know, that’s a little off) but to no effect – shocking surprise, right? Then it dawned on me that I had purchased AppleCare for it on a whim. I normally always purchase AppleCare for every Mac that I own, but for some reason purchasing the extra warranty for a phone just didn’t seem necessary somehow – maybe because I had never extended a warranty on a phone before and that had worked out for me. That said, I bought it anyway and am really glad that I did. After finally coming to terms that the little buzzer was probably kaput, I decided to head to the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store. I explained the situation and before I was done with my spiel, the Genius was setting up a brand new (perhaps factory refurbished) replacement iPhone for me. I was in and out in roughly 10 minutes and completely satisfied with the level of service I received. The point I’m trying to make is that AppleCare has always paid off for me and the customer service is great. I’ll definitely be purchasing the extended warranty for my next iPhone. If all the rumors are true (and I hope they are) about the forthcoming iPhone, I’ll be purchasing some more AppleCare very soon.

I’ve been using the Twitterriffic iPhone client for a while now and enjoying it quite a bit but with all the buzz and great press that Tweetie has been getting, I figured I probably better give it a try. I’ve tried it and and I really like it. Highly recommend it. Also, the forthcoming desktop version of the client looks like a lot of fun. I’ll be picking up a copy on Monday for sure.

My incredible wife gave birth to our son, West Lucas Pocker, at 10:40pm on March 24th, 2009. West tipped the scales at a respectable 7 pounds 9.2 ounces and stretched the tape to a full 19 inches. Going through the birthing process with my wife was an amazing, humbling and beautiful experience and the outcome has been nothing but pure joy. The three of us are having tons of fun, sleeping very little and getting really proficient with the diaper changing process. A heartfelt thank you to all of our family and friends for the warm wishes and support. On a side note, I haven’t been a father long enough yet to offer too much worthwhile advice, but I have picked up one tidbit worth mentioning. Taking pictures of your newborn means that he/she will probably be sleeping and in low light right when you want to snap that perfect pic, so a camera with a quiet shutter and fast glass is worth it’s weight in precious metal. But, I digress, back to the topic at hand… Welcome, West, we’re so glad you made it. Oh, and one more thing, just in case there is any doubt gentlemen – women are the tougher gender.

I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to handle the design and implementation of Kukui Marketing’s website, which was formally launched today. Working with owner Kirsten Fujitani was a dream. She is familiar with my work and really gave me a ton of freedom on the design. Essentially, she sent over her logo and content and let me just go for it from there. Needless to say, not being limited by some of the usual client imposed constraints was both fun and challenging. The site is fairly image and media heavy, so using a lightbox provided a great solution to deliver much of that core content. If you are planning on conducting business in Hawaii, definitely consider connecting with Kukui Marketing to help you reach your audience.

After a good deal of consideration over the last year or so, I’ve finally decided to take a measurable step toward an IE6 free lifestyle. I’ve been waiting for, and trying to anticipate, the “right time” to stop designing for IE6 as part of my normal process. I think that time is finally here (for me anyway) with last week’s release of IE8. This step away from IE6 is a little complicated from a business perspective because several of my clients require support for IE6. Even though I don’t like it (and in some ways don’t understand it), I do acknowledge that the need for IE6 support is real and important to these clients as well as their customers/users and that it cannot realistically be ignored. Sounds like a perfect opportunity for a compromise, doesn’t it? I thought so too. The compromise is this: new clients will continue to be offered support for IE6, but at an additional cost. Existing clients will continue to enjoy IE6 support (as per norm) until such time as their website realizes a major redesign, at which point IE6 support will require additional cost. I feel like this is a reasonable way forward that will help smooth the transition away from IE6 and toward arguably better browsers while rewarding existing clients for their loyalty over the years and providing them with options for consideration as their websites continue to grow and evolve.

Getting my head wrapped around the idea that Digital Web Magazine will not be publishing in the way we’ve become so accustomed to has been a struggle. I keep thinking they’re just on holiday and things will get back to normal soon – wishful thinking. It’s been a regular read and resource for me for a long time and although I understand the situation, I’m sorry to see the change. Thankfully, the site will be alive, accessible and curated for the foreseeable future. Nice to know we’ll have it around to refer to and remember the good ‘ol days.

Yesterday Apple released a public beta of version 4 of the Safari web browser. I’ve downloaded and installed it and spent roughly an hour browsing some of my favorite sites. So far I really like it. It gets out of the way a little bit more that the previous version of the software did and has a few obvious handy features. One that I really like is the new treatment for tearing away tabs to create a new window and dragging tabs between windows – very handy. The “Top Sites” feature looks like it might be really fun too, I’m not sure if it is going to work for me but I am certainly going to give it a try. I took a quick peak under the hood at some of the Developer Tools and was very happy to see some much needed improvements to this aspect of the software. I normally use Firebug via FireFox in my daily work (and I like it very much), but I am going to take the functionality in Safari for a spin and see how I fare. I like the idea of being able to stay in Safari as much as possible. Also worth noting is that the beta software includes an uninstaller (a nice touch). According to Apple, this version of Safari raises the bar for browsers in terms of speed, standards support and forward looking features (like typographical control for example). I’m looking forward to participating in the beta release.

Just finished up a redesign and preliminary launch of The Drops‘ Website. This was an especially fun project because the client gave me a great deal of freedom to do pretty much whatever I wished in terms of the design, photography and user experience. They had some great ideas for interactivity so I got to integrate an installation of WordPress and write a couple of fun web applications. One is a vote for your favorite scent app and the other is a free sample request app that has a little bit of smarts built in. Both made for some fun with PHP and MySQL. This client is near and dear to my heart because they allowed me the privilege of handling their initial branding several years ago (which was also a really fun process). It’s been a joy to watch them grow and prosper over the years and I wish them continued success with their unique product line. They are a terrific group of hard working people.

I have been avoiding contaminating my MacBook Pro with the Windows “operating system” like the plague. It just didn’t seem like a nice thing to do to my mac – it’s always been so good to me. That said, a little bit of convenience and a lotta bit of need for increased efficiency finally made me take the plunge. As a rule, I test the websites I build for proper layout and functionality in all the popular modern browsers. So these days that means I’m testing in IE6, IE7 and beginning to test in IE8 Beta 2 on the Windows side (more…)

Google’s new Web browser, Google Chrome (BETA), has arrived and it should be very interesting to see what they’ve come up with. The initial release will be Windows friendly while Linux and Mac versions are said to be on the way. The word is that Chrome is based on the efforts of the Mozilla and WebKit open source projects. As a big fan of both, I’m anxious to see where Google has taken things. Should be interesting to see how things develop (pun intended).