http://nor.nawdsign.com/ A Nor Sanavongsay Blog en nor.san@nawdsign.com Copyright 2008 2008-07-29T05:18:59-06:00 http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/iphone_3g_wasnt_worth_the_update/ http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/iphone_3g_wasnt_worth_the_update/#When:05:18:59Z It wasn’t that long ago when I bought an iPhone. A year and a month ago today. I was one of the fools to stand in line. I waited for an hour… which wasn’t so bad if I didn’t have my 2 year old daughter with me at the time (she’s three now) and did not get an iPhone! It was at the AT&T store near my house. After that frustration, I took my daughter home to go potty. It was 9pm at the time. So, not feeling fulfilled for the night, I had the urge to call the Apple Store Woodfield just to see if they had any iPhones left. Luckily for me, they did. Plenty of them! So I hopped into my car and went and got one! A year passed. New iPhone is out. Yay!!! as most people would think (me for one). I went to same Apple Store to go wait in line with a friend of mine and saw a HUGE line. There was no way I’m going to wait in THAT line. I met up with another friend of mine who had been in line for three hours! and he wasn’t even that close to the door. So, I decided not to wait and went to grab dinner with my friend at Stir Crazy. I waited a week instead at my own leisure for the darn thing. I was going to purchase one for my wife anyways, because she needed to update her five year old motorola. I went to the Woodfield store again on July 19th and still, iPhone 3Gs were out of stock. The Apple Store employee told me that the Deer Park store just had a shipment in. Deer Park was only 20 minutes away so, I hopped on my car and went. Waited for an hour to get two iPhone 3Gs. Decided to get one for myself and see what all the hype is about. I ended up activating the phones at home, because I did not feel like taking up the other people’s time. Once activated, I did not feel the warmth that the first iPhone gave me. With the first iPhone, I felt like I was one of the elite. The first to get into the modern age of phone technology. The proud few who, two months later overpaid for the iPhone nonetheless, loved the phone. The metal casing was nice; it felt expensive and well worth what I paid for. The iPhone 3G on the other hand, had a plastic casing, felt light, and hate to say this but “cheap” even though, it was 300 dollars. The commodity was not there. Everyone was getting one which is excellent! but, now the elitist feeling is gone and I no longer feel special. LOL Three days later, I took the phone on a trip with me to San Diego, for a friend’s wedding. I was going to test this sucker out to the max. I used it just as much as the first iPhone and was very disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, the new technology is great; 3G speed and GPS. But, they are such battery hogs. We found ourselves many times without a phone and had to do an emergency recharge at restaurants or where ever we can get an outlet. I highly recommend getting a phone charger for the car if you will be traveling a lot with the phone. Other than those two technology enhancement, I don’t see anything else improved. The software is the same on both the first and 3G. So at this point, I don’t see any real reason for me to upgrade to the iPhone 3G so, I will be returning this bad boy to Apple tomorrow. 2008-07-29T05:18:59-06:00 http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/iphone_20_beta_8_is_out_now/ http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/iphone_20_beta_8_is_out_now/#When:02:26:26Z Late Thursday, Apple released beta 8 (build 9m2199) of its iPhone/iPod touch software developer kit while beta certificates issued before June 9th also expired. The beta, a 1.25 gigabyte download, includes iPhone firmware version 5a345 and according to sources, improves stability as well as mentions a developer-only version of iTunes 7.7, which developers can use to “install iPhone OS Beta 8 on your Apple devices.”—from www.tuaw.com iTunes 7.7 makes my iPhone more “remote”. I can’t go into much more detail than that as I do not want to lose my privilege as a developer. For those waiting for iPHone 2.0 release, i’ll be one of the first to say that it will be quite worth it. Who else is ditching their old iPhone for the iPhone 3G on July 11th? Technology, Stuff I Like 2008-06-27T02:26:26-06:00 http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/chordc_dot_com_chord_connection_is_now_live/ http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/chordc_dot_com_chord_connection_is_now_live/#When:05:30:01Z ChordC - Connecting People With Chords, formerly a Flash Desktop Application, Chord Conquering, is now a live interactive website. This initial release brings with it a slew of exciting features not found on the CD. For one, members can interact with other members and share songs or tips on guitar playing. If you have a band and looking for members, this would be a great place to start. Or if you are the greatest guitar player and want to join a band, sign up for a free ChordC profile. This site is definitely not for people who know absolutely nothing about a guitar.  The basic knowledge of chords and tabs are required. Future release of the site will include all of the features found on the CD. The people who’ve bought the CD will find that this free web based upgrade is a wonderful addition to their guitar playing reference library. There will be sound attached to each chord, so that you will know what the chords sound like when you’re strumming along with it. Another nice feature of ChordC is the ability to find chords that you don’t know the name of. For instance, lets say you are strumming freely and found a sound that you like; you can go to the site and put in the fingering and find the matching chord. Widgets run the web, that is why we are working on a few of our own. Expect to see an iPhone version as well as a facebook application for ChordC. If you would like to find out more about the site, come on in, we’re now open. Sign up for a free profile and rock on. So what are you waiting for… go conquer those chords! Personal, Web Development, Entertainment, Technology, Stuff I Like 2008-06-15T05:30:01-06:00 http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/peak6_solutions_llc_is_launching_a_new_website/ http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/peak6_solutions_llc_is_launching_a_new_website/#When:01:18:00Z For the past few months, I have been a part of a fast-paced web application team working to deploy an Options News website for PEAK6 Solutions LLC. I’m not allowed to disclosed any information about it until the site goes live. Technically, the site is in beta and anyone can look at it at the moment. So, please feel free to take a peek and give us some feedback on any improvement we can make on the site. http://www.optionsnews.com/optionsnews/HomePage (a new version of this site is also in the works and should be up next week). The site is now live, please have a look and tell your friends about it. The new site is now http://www.onn.tv . You can also catch me doing a cameo at another PEAK6 Solutions owned website also in beta: http://www.weseed.com. 2008-05-15T01:18:00-06:00 http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/april_9th_is_css_naked_day/ http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/april_9th_is_css_naked_day/#When:02:57:00Z Sorry for the late notice. I have been quite busy the last few weeks. Please check out Dustin Diaz’s site for more details. http://naked.dustindiaz.com/ 2008-04-09T02:57:00-06:00 http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/changing_the_title_maxlength_in_expression_engine/ http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/changing_the_title_maxlength_in_expression_engine/#When:13:02:00Z Are you writing articles that involve non-roman characters in the title and find that it does not fit the max 100 character length? For example, one of my client wanted to write an article in Lao, but it turns out that they needed more than 100 characters for their title. Because of the accent marks and other characters that make up a word, it was difficult to fit in into the title textfield. Well, I have found a workaround, but it is not pretty. Here we go… Modify your MySQL table Use a database management software (I use phpMyAdmin) to get to your EE data. most web hosting services will have this installed already. Select the database table that you name for your EE installation. (*_EE) Look for *_weblog_titles on the left side panel and click on it. (* just means whatever you set the database table to when you installed EE. Mine was called EE_weblog_titles) Edit the "title" field type. I used LONGTEXT with a length of 500. Add more if you need more. Modify your EE php files Go into your file system where your EE was installed. yoursite.com/system/cp/ Look for and edit the cp.publish.php file. Do a search for "publishTitleCluster" within the cp.publish.php file. Look for the line 2569 "$DSP->input_text('title', $title, '20', '100', 'input', ..." and change the 100 to the length you desire. In my case 500. Save it and you're done. That's it! If you have any questions, please email me. Thank you for reading. 2008-03-06T13:02:00-06:00 http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/chordc_inc_has_been_established_as_the_joint_venture_of_nawdsign_and_sun_we/ http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/chordc_inc_has_been_established_as_the_joint_venture_of_nawdsign_and_sun_we/#When:13:00:00Z Chord Conquering is now known as Chord Connection. nawDsign and Sun Web Creations has merged to become ChordC Inc. In our first venture together, we are currently revamping the ChordC brand and website. Our main goal is to provide guitarists a way to get connected with chords. There are so many guitar chords (2,820) on our site, and we have made it quite easy to find them. Every time I pick up the guitar now, I must have ChordC up on my screen. It has helped me tremendously to pick up and learn those difficult chords.  The other main component to the ChordC website is to connect people as well. We have set up a profiling sytem for our users to save the chords that they use often to their profiles. They will also be able to save their favorite songs and add the chords to that song. This is very exciting. A lot of times when I’m looking for tabs for a song that I wanted to play, the sites that have them will have very small chord charts or none at all. For a beginning guitarist like me, that becomes very frustrating. Well, if you are a guitarist, please join us in our new venture to connect people with chords.  2008-02-15T13:00:00-06:00 http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/chord_conquering_is_getting_a_makeover/ http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/chord_conquering_is_getting_a_makeover/#When:04:58:00Z Chord Conquering (ChordC), the most comprehensive guitar chord reference program available anywhere, is getting a makeover. ChordC was founded by a great friend of mine, Judd Younce, to be the tool that you can use when you are at a lost for a guitar chord. Easily look up a chord in an instant with this program. We are currently going through the design and architecture phase at the moment. The first wave release will be just the chords. There are 2,820 chords that we have to input into the database, so that will take some time. I’ve been working on the look and feel for the site and getting inspirations from other social networking and guitar chords sites and making ChordC the best available for finding chords and connecting with friends to share the chords. I can’t go into too much details as most of the developmental phases have not yet been ironed out. We are planning to release the chords by Christmas this year. Look out for ChordC.com’s refresh. Art & Design, Web Development 2007-12-01T04:58:00-06:00 http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/internet_services_should_be_treated_like_street_performers/ http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/internet_services_should_be_treated_like_street_performers/#When:11:59:00Z Have you ever walked down the streets of a big city that has performers doing acts or making something? And, if you are like me, you would give them some money for their performance or just watch and walk on by. Well, this same concept is how I think about webapps and internet services. Why do I feel that way? Well, think of it this way: people do not want to pay for crappy products or services — they want free stuff. Most people, though, I believe will pay or donate money to the service providers if they think their product is of use to them. So, if you are planning to start an online service or build a web application, remember, people want free stuff! And they like to share what they found. So, make the service free for the users and you will end up with some big rewards (get paid by advertisers when you have millions of visitors at your site or use your products). This is also true for Open Source Development. Personal, Web Development, Entertainment 2007-10-12T11:59:00-06:00 http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/legacies_of_war_boston_exhibit_2007/ http://nor.nawdsign.com/Be_Like_Water/legacies_of_war_boston_exhibit_2007/#When:12:52:00Z Rarely, do I get a chance to work with such a team of passionate and highly motivated group. The Legacies of War organization is fast becoming a force to be reckon with in the advocacy world. You can find out more about them at their website: Legacies of War: History | Healing | Hope More pictures are coming soon. I will be updating this section as I find more time in the coming week. Personal 2007-10-01T12:52:00-06:00