Why the hell should I care about marketing? I’m a developer.

Marketing is the cancer on the nutsack of creativity. You cannot afford to take your eye off your brand for one second. No excuses.

This is 100% relevant to our industry because we are directly responsible for changing it. We have managed to completely change the way marketing and branding has worked with the web industry.

Who do you love? What brand do you love? What product/organization/charity could you not live without? Which brand can you connect to. How are you going to get the consumer to love you and your brand? You are gonna have to work your ass off.

Back in the 50s, we just had billboards. You couldn’t like, comment on, or retweet those. Our parents and grandparents took it as gospel. Smoke cigarettes to make yourself feel better. We have been fitted with very good bullshit detectors.

Social networking is not about connecting with brands; it’s about people. This isn’t a new thing.

How much do you care about your brand? Will you risk your reputation. You have to believe every single day that you are creating the best experience in the history of the world.

Fuck consistency. It’s not Dogma, it’s a state of mind, like winning. Your app is not the be all and end all. Don’t believe that “if you build it they will come”. Build up a voice and a personality around your app. You have to extend your read with your content. Give it some identity. Keep it real and transparent. When shit goes wrong, own up to it. People will forgive you and trust you.

Digg is successful because everyone on their team blogs. Their transparency is overwhelming. Diggnation takes it a step further by extending their brand to people all over the world. They have beers with their fans. You don’t have to be as big as Digg to create this kind of loyalty though.

Bridging the gap between online and offline breeds loyalty.

Branding does not equal name or logo.

Your values are going to be the foundation of what you are and what you always will be. It’s easy to half-ass this, but don’t.

Ethical means giving your users what they deserve.

Balance your values and your brand will be successful. Never stop listening to your users.

The development process is like a soap opera. There’s emotion there. Opening up the doors and letting people into your experience will make people evangelize on your behalf.

Everyone is in IRC channels all the time talking about projects (#product), managing deployments (#maint), or general chit-chat (#internal-ning).

One of the most helpful channels is called #appsdev, which consists of more than a handful of PHP and Javascript ninjas. And there is an open req to hire a new Application Developer.

Another great thing about working here is that you can work on stuff that interests you, and when you have working code, you can demo it to the rest of the team:

If you are interested in this position, send me an email with you resume, and let me know why you want to work at Ning.

Here is the job description:

The Team

• Application Developers are directly responsible for the innovation, performance, and scalability of Ning Networks as we rapidly scale to 10M networks and beyond. Leaders of this team include experts of the PHP, JavaScript and open source communities who have written several books on the topics.
• We have a unique application development environment using PHP and JavaScript on top of the Ning Platform REST APIs, delivering an extremely friendly and infinitely customizable product. These features allow people to create and join Ning Networks around their interests and passions.

The Opportunity

• You will play a key role in designing and executing new features within Ning Networks (such as activity streams, virtual gifts, and game design) as well as improving current features (including Ning Apps, photo and video sharing, discussions, blogging, events and more).
• You will work on optimizing performance down to the millisecond and scaling individual Ning Networks to millions of members and the entire base of social networks on Ning to 10M and beyond.
• This role will collaborate closely with the executive team, product management, and design to ensure that the projects achieve the goals we lay out.

The Qualifications

• Demonstrates initiative, flexibility and ability to concurrently manage multiple deadline-driven tasks and projects.
• Ability to work with remote colleagues.
• Experience in PHP and AJAX; and comfortable with HTML/CSS, Java or C++ and object-oriented design.
• Understands the value of unit tests. As an added bonus, practices Test-Driven Development.
• Experience programming scalable, highly-performant Web applications.
• Willingness to work in an agile environment, delivering incremental value at regular iterations.
• BS/MS in CS or equivalent experience.
• Optional: know your way around Flash.

Email me if you are interested in this position

A couple weeks ago, a co-worker of mine sent me a skitch to a funny question she received on Aardvark. I immediately thought, “let’s make this a Tumblr site” and blow it up. Voila: Vark Farts is born.

Some of these questions are just too hard to pass by.

If you want to submit good questions that you’ve received, email them to varkfarts@gmail.com or visit http://varkfarts.com/submit.

Pro tip: Type “try” in your Aardvark IM window to see questions that would be a good fit for you.

This is my first plugin, so let’s see how it goes!

Usage (version 0.2)

Download the zip file and extract the contents to your wp-content/plugins directory. In your blog’s admin tool, activate the plugin.

Next, login to Foursquare and goto the feeds page. Find your RSS feed.

Copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into the Foursquare settings panel.

Finally, paste the following code in your sidebar.php file in Wordpress:

<?php echo foursquare_get_checkins(); ?>

Here is the working version of the plugin in action:

Pretty basic now, but there will be further revisions, I promise

Downloads and version history

• Version 0.1 – Simple widget showing the latest 5 checkins with links back to venue pages – [download]
• 0.2 – Added the ability to control the number of checkins you post. Also cleaned up the code a little bit. Still want to figure out how to eliminate duplicate checkins via strcmp() or array_unitque() functions in PHP. I want to add a Google map with the kml file and show checkins on a map – [download]

In further versions, I want to explore the Wordpress widget API. Instead of this being a plugin where you have to actually paste PHP code into your sidebar, I want to bring all the interaction into the admin panel.

I welcome further requests please! Email me or leave some comments below.

Here is the git repository for my Wordpress plugins.

Note: this blog post is still a work in progress, check back periodically for updates

I have been working on the design team at Ning for the past few months, and I love it. Working at a startup is more fun than you can even imagine. The best part is that the team is small enough and focused on the product that all of your ideas will be heard and probably executed upon.

We have a pretty sweet opening for Senior User Experience Designer right now, and I want to tell ya about it:

The Team

• Our Design team is responsible for the visual, interaction and web design of Ning Networks. We give people the freedom to customize their Ning Networks at every turn, making our design challenges unique, interesting and complex.
• As a Sr. User Experience Designer at Ning, you will play a critical role on a small, but highly productive team in evolving a product used by millions of people in their daily lives.
• Your mission will be to deliver powerful and immensely creative social experiences to our Network Creators and their members. This involves participating in the key stages of the product design definition through to the final user experience and post-launch iteration.

The Opportunity

• We are looking for someone with a high degree of creativity, interaction design experience and problem solving ability. You enjoy working in a fast-paced, fun and highly collaborative environment. You have a strong work ethic, are organized to meet tight deadlines and very detail oriented.
• You have the same passion for great design as you do for creating great code. You are an active user of social networks and be highly curious. Finally, you are someone who is relentlessly focused on making great, creative ideas and experiences a reality.
• At Ning, you will have an opportunity to define innovative user interfaces and interaction styles which result in improved user productivity, discoverability and simplicity. You will work to document, simplify and streamline a highly flexible set of options Ning offers their Network Creators and their members.
• You will build your own designs in production-level, standards-based XHTML and CSS. You’ll also work with our team of Product Managers, Web Developer and Application Developers to conceive innovative user interface solutions.
• You will develop and maintain design wireframes, mockups, specification and navigation maps. You will also promote usability and consistency standards throughout your work.

The Qualifications

• A formal education in Computer Science, Industrial Design, Computer Interface Design, Human Computer Interaction or Graphic Design.
• 5+ year experience in web/interaction/interface design.
• Proven track record and a passion for designing compelling, user experiences.
• Proven experience in creating production quality XHTML and CSS. Basic JavaScript skills a plus.
• Demonstrated comprehension (portfolio) of design theory, web design, typography and color.
• Excellent presentation skills and attention to detail.
• Experience in working with various departments within a product, design and development team.
• Experience in creating various prototype methods and knowledge of best practices.
• Strong verbal and visual communication skills.
• Working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite 3 applications including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Fireworks.
• Curiosity. You’ve created a Ning Network before you interview. You have ideas on how to make the service better and faster. You have strong, thoughtful product, experience and technical questions for us.

Ping me directly if you are interested in this job: andrew@ning.com

There are a lot of reasons why you should consider this job if you are a good designer. Everyone at the company is on the cutting edge of the social web. The job is located in a very nice part of California where it never rains.

And we have a pretty nice kitchen, which is stocked with Popchips, Fresca, Tejava, and peanut M&Ms.

And we like cake with CSS3 rules:

There are more openings on the job website. Let me know if any sound appealing to you.

Twitter has great documentation, a vibrant developer community, and a ton of users saying interesting and uninteresting things.

So when Chris Peri and Jon Wu asked me to co-author a book with them, I couldn’t say no.

We are working with Pearson Publishing, more specifically the SAMS Teach Yourself book series. The book will be titled Twitter API in 24 Hours. We have a blog that will dissect the process, show code examples and tutorials, and live on past publish date. We are using Fast Pencil to write the book.

If you want to learn something specifically about the API, please let me know, I want to cover it in the book.

I will update this blog with updates as the book gets closer to publishing.

I am very excited to be writing a book!

I remember Eliot as a genius, an explorer, a jokester, and an all around good guy. We took AP Calculus together at Downingtown High School. We also played trumpet together in the marching band, and traveled to Pasadena to perform in the Rose Parade in 2001. When I found out he was going to Princeton after high school, I knew he would make it big.

Most of my contact with Eliot had been through Facebook, where I would frequently check out his amazing pictures. I feel like he climbed every mountain known to man:

I felt a little worse when I heard about his passing because I was supposed to meet up with him a few weeks ago when he was visiting northern California for some business. Our timing was off, and we couldn’t meet up. I really really really wish I got to see him. He was up to some big things too:

“As for what I am up to, a couple of friends and I put together a business plan that won an incubator contest with Lightspeed Associates here in palo alto, so our programming team has been out here all summer testing things out and getting ready to launch our product (which is basically a service that delivers test preparation material for standarized tests, such as the SAT/ACTs, through sms platforms). Most of the time I have been working on this stuff remotely, because I had some business on the east coast, but felt that I should come out during the push towards launching the beta…”

Eliot was such a great friend, even though we hadn’t seen each other since high school. When tragedy struck at my university two years ago, Eliot reached out to me:

I will remember Eliot as an adventurer, advancer of technology, musician, and general enthusiast of life. He is survived by his parents, and two sisters Hilary and Whitney.

Please join the Flickr group, and add photos of Eliot if you have any.

Here is a message from the family:

Relatives and friends are invited to Eliot’s Funeral Service, 10:00 am, Monday, September 28, 2009 at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 7 St. Andrew’s Lane, Glenmoore, PA. Interment is private.
Visitation will be held from 9:00 am – 10:00 am, Monday, September 28, 2009 at the church.

We would like any friends of Eliot who are coming in from a distance and staying overnight on Sunday in the area to **get in touch with us**. (Facebook (John Kalmbach), john.kalmbach@gmail.com, or 610 873 1449).

Today was my first day working as a web developer for Ning. The office is in Palo Alto, and I’ll be taking Caltrain from SF every day. I’ve spent most of my day meeting people, learning git, and setting up my system.

I am very excited to be working with Gina Bianchini and team.

Anyway, just wanted to put it out there what my next gig will be. You can reach me at andrew@ning.com. Ping me any time.

Also, be sure to check out my test Ning site for Anchor Steam beer fans. I will be updating it all the time.

Rewind two years and some change: April 5, 2007. I’m stuck in the Roanoke airport in Virginia. My Thursday night flight to San Francisco had to be pushed to morning. I was gonna be late for my interview at CNET the next day.

Rockstar human and HR person, Hilary Straw, called me every day trying to get me to come for an interview.

My flight landed and I rushed to downtown San Francisco to meet with my new boss and her boss. I was terrified, but really excited. I remember falling in love with San Francisco, as well as this new company. When I got a tour of the building, I was like, “Holy shit! They have video games here?!”

I immediately accepted the job when Arquay offered it to me. I had heard of CNET before, but my business division would be called BNET, the business version.

Since then, it’s been a pleasure walking up 2nd Street every day to come to work. It really doesn’t feel like work if you enjoy the people, the product, and the process of making new things.

Over the past two plus years, I have had the best job anyone could ask for right out of college. I have worked with amazing, talented, brilliant people. They have taught me more than I could learn in any classroom.

The memories will last forever.

Watching a smaller company merge into a larger one has been a fun experience too. But I will always call this place CNET.

I wanted to take a minute to inform you guys about what’s goin on with me, and also commemorate the people who have made my life great for the past few years.

I’ll never forget the first day, when Robert Balousek welcomed me to the company. He was my first friend, and he’s still a close friend.

This is John Potter, a true engineer, Republican, and dictat… leader. I actually got him to join Twitter the day I started.

Can’t forget Zander. He has moved up the ladder a lot, and been a strong face around here:

Neil Ashe has been transformed from CEO of CNET Networks to President of CBS Interactive. And I’ve seen his leadership evolve along the way. An awesome role model:

Marc Mendell is the creative director here, and it shows. He is responsible for the beautiful designs of BNET, ZDNet, TechRepublic, MoneyWatch, Smartplanet, and more. Him and I have worked on a ton of personal projects together, including the design of this blog. He has been an inspiration to me in many ways. I remember when his late grandfather was getting sick, he told me that I inspired him. He told me to always be curious, enthusiastic, and never stop learning.

Alexis Gallisá taught me how to make the accent in his name on a Mac, and plenty more.

Joel B. Sacks welcomed me to the company too. He was also a great bar hopper

Vinay Dixit is my best friend at CNET. He has been the most inspirational person in my life the past two years:

McLovin, AKA Ball-log, has been my brother here for the past two years. I love him dearly, even when he’s inappropriate.

Scott Parsons works magic, especially with Mootools. He has defined my HTML markup and CSS stylability. And he makes a killer Buckeye.

Neha was the spirit of CNET when I joined. She ruled the videos, and has taught me a lot about entrepreneurialism and passion. She is my star!

Selvin George has taught me LOADS of Javascript. Also, life lessons. He has taught me to take life slow, but don’t miss any opportunities.

Kenric rules the world. He will always take the time to help you understand something.

Josh writes the web. He has more puns than Oscar Wilde, and he will always goof you.

Moynihan makes me laugh, think, and dream harder.

Tom and Veronica are one of the reasons I first started to be interested in CNET.

I can’t sleep at night if I don’t listen to Buzz Out Loud.

Molly Wood is another story. She is absolutely wonderful, and I will miss her SOO much. She rants, raves, and rocks my socks off.

Rafe defines the word “authoritative”.

Natali gets me Loaded.

And Kara Tsuboi showed me how to be a professional TV personality.

Even though he never worked at CNET, I got to meet Merlin Mann here.

One time, the local CBS 5 guys called me to talk about how I hate voicemail.

Navarro Brooks is like my west coast mom:

And Leslie gives a good handshake:

Solis can really throw a ball:

And Erica can smile:

If you see William at the front desk, say what’s up to him for me:

People come and go, and you have to really experience every moment and cherish them or you will miss out. Jablonski taught me that:

I will really miss Christine and Katy:

And a special hot dog:

Sitting next to Carl Harris every day has been a blast. I got along well with him cuz he is from North Carolina and Atlanta:

One thing I will really miss is getting backstage access at CNET Redball.

I can’t forget Arquay. Probably the toughest boss in the world, but she is amazing.

There are countless other people who have positively influenced me over the years, and I am very thankful for them.

As a gift to the company, I am transferring the domain name newmediaminded.com over to CBS Corp. I helped build this blog with Marc Mendell and Libby Bittner for the interns to blog.

Okay, I’ve run out of energy and Flickr photos. I have tons of photos actually. From CNET and CBS.

I will be writing even more on The Web Life on ZDNet. Watch for a post a day if I’m on point.

Oh, I almost forgot. Where am I headed to next? Promise you didn’t just scroll all the way down to the bottom of this post to read this?

Here is the only hint I’m giving you: 寧

When the Internet was just getting started in the mid 1990s, I was really excited to start learning HTML.

Once I got tired of Geocities, I wanted to start my own website and host it myself. At age 13, I gathered up all my allowances and sent Network Solutions $100 to register the domain name lespaul.com (It’s kinda funny that 12 years later, my CDNow ad still renders on archive.org).

This website was basically my sandbox. I was a guitar enthusiast, and I wanted to build an online catalog of the every guitar possible. My favorite guitar at the time was the Gibson Les Paul. So I bought lespaul.com because I thought it was a popular name that people would search for.

Everything was well and good. I was learning about guitars, web design, CSS, and web publishing. I updated it almost every day. I maintained and operated the site for a full year, until Gibson sent me a cease and desist letter, claiming they have owned the copyright to “Les Paul” since 1954.

My dad’s lawyer sprung into action. He sent them back a letter explaining that I was a harmless 13-year-old kid just playing with the web. I wasn’t selling anything, and I was even sending link love to Gibson’s website on my guitar pages. We eventually came to an agreement, and I handed over the domain. In exchange, I got a free Les Paul Custom Black Beauty.

Days later, I bought guitarinfo.com:

Today, Les Paul passed away. 12 years ago, I doubt he ever knew that I owned his name dot com, but I always secretly hoped that he was the one who said to Gibson, “Hey, let’s get this ugly website redirecting to something a little prettier”.

What was your first domain name?

You can ride out to this:

Why does it cost $4 to re-direct a shipment to a new address using the online tool? I can understand that it would cost to use the phone service to make a change, because you are literally using human resources, but this is a scam. By using the online tool, you are simply modifying fields in a database and a computer is doing all the work.

I was also surprised to see that it cost $4 to simply reschedule a new delivery time. This is insane.

You shouldn’t have to pay money to receive a package that was sent to you, regardless of the last minute changes. UPS provides a service to customers, but it shouldn’t try to snake a few extra dollars to make a simple change.

What happened to taking care of the customers and trying to win them back again for another transaction with quality customer service?

I am directing this blog post at Thomas from UPS. I am hoping he can help me, or at least shed light on this disaster. I have been a UPS customer for years now, ever since I used to drop packages off at the West Chester location as a kid.

UPDATE: Thomas responded:

I went into the store at about 10:00 a.m. this morning with this coupon for a free pastry.

The man at the counter said there were no more free pastries left, when there was clearly a full case.

My colleague Christine also experienced a problem. The fine print on the coupon included apple fritters, but she wasn’t able to get one.

Terrible!! Unfollow them if you already do. And never go there again.

Here is the store that screwed us.

Note: The Foursquare API requires authentication to use most of its methods. You can choose basic HTTP authentication, but these days most developers prefer OAuth. So this tutorial will focus on OAuth, which is basically a trusted virtual handshake.

In this blog post, I want to give you guys a detailed tutorial on how I accomplished using the oauth-php library with Foursquare’s new API.

What you’ll need

• Your favorite text editor
• A web server with PHP
• MySQL with a way to edit tables
• Foursquare’s documentation
• A lot of patience – this took me a few weeks to figure out, but I hope you can do it in less than an hour.

Okay, so let’s get started shall we? By the way, here is what we are building:

The first thing I did was sign up for a consumer key and secret at Foursquare. To do that, point your browser to http://playfoursquare.com/oauth/register:

The callback URL is the location your users will be sent after they authenticate on Foursquare’s site.

Here is the OAuth workflow in five easy steps:

• Get request key and secret
• Provide link to foursquare authorization page
• User will approve or deny access and be redirected to your application
• Get access key and secret and store in your database
• Use access key and secret to make api method calls

Step one is done, but step two is a doozy.

I prefer using PHP, so let’s take a look at some code.

$key = '447ebcf0b99a149e06a9aa0cc91fe79904a54f798';
$secret = 'e6b7d0195c4481369ab87509d63591a7';

This is my key and secret. Yours will be different. This is how I start out my index.php file. Let’s move on…

require_once 'oauth/OAuthDiscovery.php';
require_once 'oauth/OAuthRequester.php';
require_once 'oauth/OAuthRequestVerifier.php'; 
require_once 'oauth/OAuthServer.php';

Here is where I am including the OAuth library files. You only need these four to get started. Next:

$options = array(
        'server' => 'mysql.foursqwhere.com',
	'username' => 'foursqwhere',
	'password' => 'f0ursqu4re',
	'database' => 'foursqwhere'
);

This is a data object that stores the MySQL login information. oauth-php uses a database to store your OAuth tokens and secrets and all the goodness. It also requires that you set a $user_id variable to keep track of multiple sites authentications. In this case, I am hardcoding that value as 1:

$user_id = 1;

We are ready to connect to the database now. Here is how it’s done with oauth-php:

$store = OAuthStore::instance('MySQL', $options);

This next bit of code will check to see if there is anything in the database already relating to our consumer. If not, it will create a new entry in the database with everything we need to request a “token” from Foursquare.

// See if we have already an access token, if so we don't need to do the "dance"
try {
	$secrets = $store->getSecretsForSignature("playfoursquare.com", $user_id); 
//	var_dump($secrets);  
} catch(OAuthException $e) {
	$secrets = false;
	// Make sure the server is registered
    try {
    	$store->getServer($key, $user_id, true);
	} catch(OAuthException $e) {
    	// The server description
	$server = array(
		'consumer_key' => $key,
		'consumer_secret' => $secret,
		'server_uri' => 'playfoursquare.com',
	 	'ocr_server_uri' => 'http://api.playfoursquare.com/',
	 	'ocr_server_uri_host' => 'api.playfoursquare.com',
	 	'ocr_server_path' => '/',
		'signature_methods' => array('HMAC-SHA1', 'PLAINTEXT'),
		'request_token_uri' => 'http://playfoursquare.com/oauth/request_token',
		'authorize_uri' => 'http://playfoursquare.com/oauth/authorize',
		'access_token_uri' => 'http://playfoursquare.com/oauth/access_token'
		);
 
		// Save the server in the the OAuthStore
		$consumer_key = $store->updateServer($server, $user_id);
	}
	// Obtain a request token from the server
	$token = OAuthRequester::requestRequestToken($key, $user_id);
}

Once we have that, we can finally direct the user over to Foursquare. Do a var_dump() on $token and you can see that you finally have a token that Foursquare will accept.

Array ( [authorize_uri] => http://playfoursquare.com/oauth/authorize [token] => 89910ced8d6f4dc3706d6208cc50789404a64046a )

Time to build the URL to connect to Foursquare:

$authLink = 'http://playfoursquare.com/oauth/authorize?oauth_token=' . $token['token'];

Here is how I built out the link on my site:

<h2 id="start"><a href="<?php echo $authLink;?>">Start using Foursqwhere!</a></h2>

Once the user goes to Foursquare to authenticate, they will be sent to your callback URL. Some people like to use the same location, but I directed the user over to a new directory. The callback URL contains some query parameters that are required to make signed posts to Foursquare. Here is what my callback URL looks like:

http://www.foursqwhere.com/home/index.php?consumer_key=447ebcf0b99a149e06a9aa0cc91fe79904a54f798&user_id=1
&oauth_token=d434603dbfef173efeb930494ca713e904a64a832

It contains the consumer key, a user ID (hardcoded as 1), and an OAuth token.

Okay, here is where it might get a little hacky. Sometimes you get an error when you reach your callback page. Something about the getSignatures() function failing. Make sure your database has the following fields are correct in your database:

Okay, moving on to the callback page code. I usually declare my $consumer_key variable again just for good practice:

$consumer_key = '447ebcf0b99a149e06a9aa0cc91fe79904a54f798';

Then I create a cookie in case my users come back and don’t want to re-authenticate again:

if (empty($_COOKIE["Foursqwhere"])) {
	$oauth_token = $_GET['oauth_token'];
	setcookie("Foursqwhere", $oauth_token);
} else {
	$oauth_token = $_COOKIE["Foursqwhere"];
}

Include a few more oauth-php library files:

require_once '../oauth/OAuthDiscovery.php';
require_once '../oauth/OAuthServer.php';
require_once '../oauth/OAuthRequest.php';
require_once '../oauth/OAuthRequestLogger.php';
require_once '../oauth/OAuthStore.php'; 
require_once '../oauth/OAuthRequestSigner.php';
require_once '../oauth/OAuthRequestVerifier.php';
require_once '../oauth/OAuthRequester.php';

oauth-php requires that you connect to the database again before you can use your token:

$options = array(
	'server' => 'mysql.foursqwhere.com',
	'username' => 'foursqwhere',
	'password' => 'f0ursqu4re',
	'database' => 'foursqwhere'
);
$store = OAuthStore::instance('MySQL', $options);

Almost there. Now let’s request the access token:

try
{
    OAuthRequester::requestAccessToken($consumer_key, $oauth_token, $user_id);
}
catch (OAuthException $e)
{
    // Something wrong with the oauth_token.
    // Could be:
    // 1. Was already ok
    // 2. We were not authorized
}

Believe it not, now we are officially approved to make signed requests to Foursquare. Here is a link to their API and Google discussion group.

I will show you some examples of my code now. Let’s use the checkins method provided by the API:

$api_checkins = 'http://api.playfoursquare.com/v1/checkins.json';
$params_checkins = array();
$checkins = new OAuthRequester($api_checkins, 'GET', $params_checkins);
$checkins_result = array_filter($checkins->doRequest($user_id));
$checkins_body = $checkins_result['body'];

You can do a var_dump() on $checkins_body to see what data is returned. Note that the $api_checkins variable string has .json as a file extension. If you leave this blank, you get an XML tree of data back.

This is how I get the current user data, using XML instead. Towards the bottom, you will see how I target certain nodes:

$api_user = 'http://api.playfoursquare.com/v1/user';
$params_user = array();
$user = new OAuthRequester($api_user, 'GET', $params_user);
$user_result = $user->doRequest($user_id);
$user_body = $user_result['body'];
$user_rss = simplexml_load_string($user_body);
$user_city = $user_rss->city->name;
$user_lat = $user_rss->checkin->venue->geolat;
$user_lon = $user_rss->checkin->venue->geolong;
$you = $user_rss->checkin->venue->name;

So when I saw Alison Rosen using Blogger, I wanted to help her move to Wordpress, and start using her own domain name. I’m no designer, but here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

I got Facebook Connect up and running with the help of Disqus. Each post has the ShareThis plugin, in addition to the Tweetmeme plugin.

Also, moving from Blogger was a breeze. You login to Blogger within Wordpress and it just imports everything.

Another cool thing that I did is cached her Twitter feed. I modified this code to accept the JSON instead of an RSS feed. We are only hitting the Twitter API every ten minutes, instead of everytime someone hits the site.

Hope you like the site. I plan on building more things into it, and eventually trying to get a real designer to take a look at it.

Check out her demo reel, she is pretty funny:

I wanted to help her because she blogs A LOT. And she deserves to have a nice place for her to express herself, and for her audience to contribute. What do you think of the site?

The story starts out:

Once upon a time in a little place they used to call the City of Lights, there was a Boy who had a Heart Made of Gold…

I wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside, so I will have to explain it here. Imagine an urban circus. People flying back and forth on living room drapers, little people chasing tires, a love story, lots of dancing, acrobatics, painfully flexible but graceful stretching, a drum and xylophone two-piece, and a lots of laughs, oos, and aahs.

I could say more, but I want you to see the show. It’s playing at San Francisco’s Brava Theatre in the Mission.

Click here to buy tickets for Kamikaze Heart.

It was totally different than the pot-pie tasting I did at Chow last year.

Their startup is a marketplace for high-end artisan food vendors, so they get a lot of free food samples to try. This tasting was to decide if they would ultimately decide to offer some of these ingredients in their store. I was lucky to taste along.

A tradition at Foodzie tasting is to sign your name on a cork. Last week, Kevin Rose was at a tasting, and I got a picture of his cork:

Laura Werlin, aka “The Cheeze Lady“, was fresh off a judging at a grilled cheese contest at San Francisco’s AT&T Park. She brought some of her cookbooks for us, and then told us that it’s okay to put a plate over the grilled cheese to expedite the melting process.

We got right down to building sandwiches after Laura gave us some tips on grilling.

There were so many types of cheese and toppings to choose from.

The table was setup very nicely too.

This was by far my favorite cheese:

My sandwich included pesto truffle oil, two kinds of cheese, a thick slice of bacon, and some experimental salami. It was to die for.

I really enjoyed the tasting and I hope Emily and Rob invite me over for another soon.

Check out the rest of my pics at Flickr »

(Bentley cleaned up the mess when everyone was finished!)

I was proud to be a groomsman at Vinay’s wedding this weekend. I had a lot of fun, and really enjoyed the ceremony. The venue was the Golden Gate Club in the Presidio, and it was beautiful.

Full photoset on Flickr

Scott Beale says that a variety of different sites are using the service and so far the response is good. Veronica Belmont and Art of the Prank are two good examples of high-traffic Wordpress installations using the Laughing Squid Cloud.

The good guys at Rackspace will be powering the service. For $12 bucks a month, you will have reliable storage and serving of pages with speed. I’ve moved the blog over this evening, and it’s like zipping around in a new hybrid vehicle; fast, quiet, and little exhaust.

The Ultra Squid Plan gets you: 2GBs of disk space, 100 GBs of bandwidth, 1000 compute cycles, 5 MySQL databases, 30 POP/IMAP email accounts and 1 GB of email storage per mailbox.

I deleted andrewmager.com from Dreamhost, but I still host 50+ domains there. I wanted to put my blog on a more stable architecture because I plan on blogging more.

Give Laughing Squid a try if you have a site that you don’t want to lose. I want to have multiple copies of my blog’s files in case a server drops. Cloud lets you do that.