Go vote for “Dude, where’s my UI architecture?” for SXSWi 2010!

This is a topic I’m very passionate about and I hope I can count on your support to help the talk get picked for the event. There’s over 3000 submissions for only 300 spots, so every vote counts!

Also, there’s lots of other great technical topics to vote on. I’ve started a list of a few I’m stoked about on this linked-in thread, so if you’re feeling generous, lend some votes their way as well.

The first project is called LABjs (Loading And Blocking JavaScript). Put simply, this is a little tool (2.5k compressed) that lets you load Javascript assets dynamically, in parallel, but still allows you to define “blocking”, which is to wait for one or a set of scripts to load before executing other code, such as perhaps loading more scripts.

The main purpose of LABjs is to load scripts dynamically, in parallel, instead of old-school <script> tags which only load one at a time, and block everything else on the page. This significantly speeds up your page load. At the same time, you do sometimes still need to block and wait for some script to get loaded before doing other things. So, you get both in one simple loader API.

For instance, say you’re on a page that needs jQuery, but also needs a number of jQuery plugins. You need to load jQuery core itself, blocking on that download, and the ideally load all the other plugin files afterwards, in parallel, to get the page rendered and functional as quickly as possible. LABjs makes this type of functionality drop-dead simple.

So, this old style of <script> tags:

<script src="jquery.js"></script>
<script src="jquery.myplugin1.js"></script>
<script src="jquery.myplugin2.js"></script>
<script src="jquery.myplugin3.js"></script>

Becomes:

$LAB
.script("jquery.js")
.block()
.script("jquery.myplugin1.js")
.script("jquery.myplugin2.js")
.script("jquery.myplugin3.js")
.block(function(){
    // init myplugin1, 2, and 3
});

LABjs is now in v0.7, and is demo’d and hosted on: http://labjs.com.

As I said, this type of loading logic is powerful and clean, and will probably replace the code loading logic in flensed/CheckPlayer/flXHR projects for their next releases.

Joe McCann wrote a great blog post describing and showing off the LABjs tool.

Next up, I’m gonna talk about mpAjax, which allows for easy parsing of multi-part Ajax responses.

I recently switched phones to the Samsung Propel Pro. This is a big switch for me, as I’ve been on the Treo line of phones, with PalmOS, for a very long time (since before most of you knew what a smartphone was).

Actually, I’m really just biding my time until the Palm Pre is released in GSM/unlocked form (non-Sprint), hopefully sometime early next year. Mobile phone vendors, if you are listening, the better future for mobile app development is in Javascript/HTML/CSS stacks, not these proprietary hinderances we’ve been forced to endure for so long.

For now, naturally, I have to replace all my old mobile applications with ones that will work for the Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard OS that Propel Pro runs. No small task as it turns out.

The real trick is that Propel Pro doesn’t run “Classic” or “Professional”, because it doesn’t have a touchscreen. This causes many problems with a lot of WinMob apps, because they are all written assuming a touch screen, and so those apps fail for those of us unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on how you look at it!) to not have touchscreens on our smart phones.

In any case, as my quest continues to find mobile apps that will work on my touchscreen-less phone, I finally found a twitter client that works well for me. @Twikini. Strange name, but a solid app none-the-less.

I’m particularly impressed by how usable the app is despite its “burden” of being without a touch-screen. On any tweet update, you can move the directional control left to do a “@reply” to the author, and right will give you a “RT @” retweet with the text already quoted. These two simple tasks have become so ingrained into DNA of what tweet’ing is about, it’s nice to see that they didn’t have to be buried in some menu option or rely on some fancy finger guesture to get at. They are quite literally at your fingertip, and I find that smart and well executed.

And the best part? The app costs just $4.95. What could be even better than that? It’s actually free! That’s right, all you have to do is write a simple blog post, like this one, and they give it to you for free. Genius, huh!?

Check out Twikini on twitter and by all means, if you have a Windows Mobile 6.1 STANDARD phone like I do, check out the app for yourself!

PS. Though this app unfortunately doesn’t do so (maybe they will, I can only hope!), if you are writing any kind of mobile app, you should be using PhoneGap!

“It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing,” said Time Warner Cable chief executive Glenn Britt. “As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met.”

Unfortunately, Time Warner is being a bit disingenuous, with statements like “until further consultation with our customers”. In other words, they’re waiting until they can find a better way to convince us that it’s the best way. At least we get a “gracious” reprieve while we go back to “school” and “learn” what fair internet is all about.

I also want to give a big congratulations to Free Press, Save The Internet.com, and Stop The Cap.com, as well as many others, for organizing the uprising which caused Time Warner to back down.

But more importantly, the thanks belongs to you, the internet user, who along with 16,000 others, sent letters to Congress in the span of few short days to express our collective outrage. Our internet is only our internet if we fight to keep it ours.

My protest is that I will be switching from their internet service, soon, if they do not recant. I will not participate in their desperate grabs at survival after years of money-hungry, poor mismanagement. They are a monopoly in all ways (except in technical legal terms), and this is what they do when they go unchecked. Watch out, America. This is only the beginning of bad things to come. Unless we stand up and fight. Contact your congressman and do the same, even if you aren’t in one of the targetted areas yet. Otherwise, you will probably be next on the hit list.

It is unbelievable to me that Time Warner (or any other provider) is being allowed to do this.

Firstly, they basically have a de-facto monopoly because they are the only ones with cable lines to almost all major metropolitan areas around here (COX being the exception in some of the suburbs). Lots of other cable “providers” (like Grande, for instance) are out there, but they all lease cable bandwidth from TW or COX. This means that if TW starts doing this, when their contracts are up with those re-sellers, there’s a much higher chance that those companies will have to follow suit. So the evenutal outcome is that TW is going to use their “monopoly” status to force us all into this, or to other providers.

And not only is it unfair and monopolistic what they are doing, but the way in which they are doing it is sheer madness. The bandwidth caps they have chosen are so incredibly low it just simply boggles the mind.

The medium cap (that is, the cap which would keep most cable bills the same for most consumers) would allow an average download usage that is *only* 2/3 the normal usage you get from having a 56k modem connected 24/7! That’s right, TW is moving cable bandwidth usage back to the days of old-school modem usage! It’s insanity, in the name of money hungry, and poorly managed, business.

I know most of the media is focusing on the fact that this is primarily aimed at curbing internet video downloading so they can stop loosing cable/advertising dollars. But, they will affect lots of other legitimate bandwidth usage in the process.

For instance, I routinely buy software, legally, over the internet, and choose to download that software to save on costs and the environment. These programs can range from the hundreds of megabytes to the couple of gigabyte range.

This means that quite realistically, I could exceed a “normal” bandwidth cap after downloading only 1 or 2 legally purchased pieces of software in a month, and end up paying excessive overage fees for otherwise normal web surfing and checking email.

And this doesn’t even get into the fact that I do freelance side web business work from home, or telecommute to my real job from home. In both cases, I do a lot of file transferring (again, legally) of images, web code, etc. I can’t even imagine having to tell my boss that I couldn’t work on some emergency code fix for our software because I didn’t have any bandwidth left at home.

Cell phone providers somehow get away with limiting minutes, and people have those types of issues from time to time, but it’d be unheard of in this day and age for the same to be true of home internet usage.

I strongly urge you to fight this and not allow TW to go down this path. We have to send a signal that the ISP’s don’t own the internet, and they can’t act like a school bully in the lunch line and force us to “pay up” just to get in line with all the other kids. It’s been unfair and unacceptable behavior in every other area of life, we can’t let this one slide or they’ll walk all over us. Seriously.

As for me, if it doesn’t change, and soon, I’ll be changing to another type of internet provider, like DSL from the phone company, to avoid and to protest such behavior. I simply will not sit by and let them take more of my hard earned money for less service.

You should all be writing letters of a similar nature to your congressman. You should be blogging about it. You should be twitter’ing about it. You should be talking about it to friends, family, and coworkers.

Want to take action? Use this tool from FreePress.net to make your voice heard.