Perfect for your nerdy Valentine

Spotted over at Dingbat Press, and perfect for the nerd in your life (or the one you want in your life).

And one more:

From Pop + Shorty.

Friday Links: A brief history of the computer

• Photo essay: A Brief History of the Computer.
• Periodic Table of World Internet Facts.
• Also, The Periodic Table of Smellements.
• Logos are dead: “They are a hangover from old-school thinking about branding. There is no desire by the public for a new logo.”
• Google Android Toys. My heart exploded when I saw that little green robot in shirt and tie.
• Read the first interview with Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson in 20 years.
• Fallon: Promotions emphasize ‘people-centered’ digital approach.
• How the iPad will change the advertising business.
• Why Animals Speak in Super Bowl Ads: How Rating Systems Have Ruined the Creative

Know your history: 38 years of Super Bowl Commercials

The Super Bowl is Sunday, and for those of us who don’t get into sports it can still be considered an event what with The Who playing the halftime show (though they do have big shoes to fill after The Boss’ performance last year), and, of course, the commercials. Before the big game, take a look at this archive featuring 38 years of Super Bowl Commercials. It’s a fun history lesson in pop culture, technology, and advertising.

Even if you don’t watch all the commercials even the thumbnails are pretty revealing. For instance, Michael J. Fox had quite a commercial run for Pepsi from 87-89 when in 90 he was usurped by Fred Savage.

Here’s the commercial for the Tandy computer, a steal at only $2,999 (1984):

Also running the same year (1984), the iconic Apple commercial:

I also loved this one for IBM Typewriters (1986):

MnPHP user group tonight; MSP Wordpress tomorrow at The Nerdery

Tonight only, the Minnesota PHP user group graciously yields it usual first-Thursday-of-the-month slot at The Nerdery to make way for tomorrow’s Minneapolis-St. Paul Wordpress group meeting. Please note that Minnesota PHP will return to regularly scheduled programming in March.

Minnesota PHP, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 6-9 p.m.

PHP 5.3 - Mike Willbanks will go over new features in PHP 5.3 (major and some minor you likely wouldn’t know about unless you troll the release logs) as well as anything to watch for in migrating.

Zend Framework Introduction to Zend Application - Nerdery rockstar Justin Hendrickson discusses Zend Framework and utilizing Zend Application.

Please RSVP.

Minneapolis-St. Paul Wordpress, Thursday, Feb. 4, 6:30-9 p.m.

Session 1:

• HTML for Beginners (Tony Thomas)
• Building WP Widgets with the “new” Widget API (Ray Champagne)
• MSP Wordpress Team Meeting to prepare for Overnight Website Challenge: Part I (Tim Elliot)

Session 2:

• CSS for Beginners (Daniel J. Post)
• MSP Wordpress Team Meeting to prepare for Overnight Website Challenge: Part II (Tim Elliot)

Please RSVP.

Both events are free whenever you are.

Also, if you’re looking for even more user groups and other tech community-building initiatives to get involved with, check out Central Standard Tech.

Tech Tuesday: Development for (and getting our Nerdery hands on) the Apple iPad

By now, you’ve read all about the Apple’s new tablet, the iPad. You’ve watched the videos. You’ve maybe giggled about the product name; let’s be honest though, the Nintendo Wii’s name hasn’t hurt its popularity. You’ve either dismissed it as a big iPod Touch that won’t go anywhere, or, you’ve already smashed your piggy bank and have money in hand. Regardless, Apple has a pretty good track record with their latest products (iPod, iTunes, iPhone) and we don’t want our ad and marketing agency partners to be the last ones to the party.

First, the iPad debut doesn’t mean that our agency partners should stop making iPhone applications. All iPhone applications will work on the iPad out of the box.

But how does the iPad affect our agency partners who have already created applications for iPhone and now also want to take advantage of the bigger screen of the iPad? Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as hitting an Easy button (trust me, I have one) and magically all your applications are reformatted for the iPad. The user interface will have to be redesigned to support multiple resolutions. It’s also not just relaying out the design for the larger screen; it’s also understanding what the iPad is, and designing an amazing user interface to take advantage of the new user interface features.

When looking at creating a new iPad application, our agency partners really have two options: target just the iPad or target the iPhone and the iPad.  Targeting the only the iPad should have a similar development cycle and cost as developing an application just for the iPhone. If the choice is to target both devices, there will be some design layout changes, but the core of the application will stay the same. There will also be some additional time for our crack Quality Assurance team to make sure we release a great application.

If you don’t think the iPad is going anywhere, I present Steve Ballmer.

Then again, if you think Apple is infallible, I present the iPod Hi-Fi.

Either way, The Nerdery is ready to help you create great applications, no matter the platform.

Only 16

When The Nerdery announced a couple weeks ago it had invited 16 (rather than 12) teams of web development volunteers to the Overnight Website Challenge, some who’ve been in the 24-hour needy-meets-nerdy room for extended periods scratched their head while recalling their experience. “That’s a lot of people – and twice as many feet – in some mighty close quarters,” some said.

“The Nerdery went a bit nuts here, even for them,” said one industry observer.

So, while we draw up schematics for the new-and-improved seating chart, here are the 16 (rather than 12) nonprofits coming to the 2010 Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge (listed in no particular order, other than alphabetical)

• Bloomington Chorale
• Centro Campesino
• Child Protection International
• Common Ground
• Dakota Wicohan
• DesignWise Medical Incorporated
• Homeward Bound
• Kinship of Greater Minneapolis
• Minnesota Association for Children’s Mental Health
• Minnesota Jaycees
• Minnesota Senior Corps Association
• Multicultural School for Empowerment
• Redwood Area Communities Foundation
• Restorative Justice Community Action
• Rural Renewal Energy Alliance (RREAL)
• World Savvy

More on the Big Green Monster.

Friday Links: Lady Gaga, iPads, and Super Bowl Ads, oh my!

• As Mark said, A Lady Gaga link from the Wall Street Journal? Yes, yes indeed: How Lady Gaga made her name in a digital world.
• 10 of the worst Super Bowl ads ever.
• The iPad and a generational shift in computing.
• From the headlines I will always click division comes: Unbelieveable Lego art from Nathan Sawaya.
• Newsday spends $4 million to redesign their site and put content behind a paywall only to garner 35 subscribers.
• Building developers houses instead of cubes. (via @konrness)
• Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, on using social media with a calm, clear head.
• Superhuman tape measure skills, surely you have 29 seconds to watch this awesomeness.
• Confessions of a Book Pirate.
• Audi my have Super Bowl PR nightmare on its hands. Of course, I had no idea the “Green Police” were affiliated with the Nazis but that might be because I slept through most of my History of WWII class in college.
• Now that the The Denver Egoist is expanding its empire I hope we see a Minneapolis Egoist soon.

iPad: Magical & Revolutionary?

So the much anticipated Apple tablet has been revealed to the world, and as with most any Apple product about half the people have already dubbed it the iDud and about half the people are fingering their credit cards ready to complete their transaction.

What’d you think?

The word magical seems a bit much. I’m not sure what a gadget would have to do at this point to seem magical, but I’m pretty sure the presentation of that magical device would not include spreadsheets (really, Apple).

The usual suspects have already started rolling in with their hands-on experiences (Gizmodo, Engadget, and ArsTechnica), and menstruation jokes overtake Twitter, but none of it feels magical or all that revolutionary yet.

As with most devices of this ilk, I always wait for the nerds and the fans to provide the real context. On its own a gadget is not magical, it’s what people can do with that’s magic. So far no magic, but that might be only a matter of time.

As a booknerd, I was really excited to hear about the e-book (or iBooks I guess they’re called now) functionality. I thought perhaps Apple could make me eschew books the way the iPod made me stop buying CDs and switch to downloads. So far, no dice. If there’s no multi-tasking or, that I saw, no way to annotate the iBook, I see little sense in switching since I’d still need a paper and pen to make notes. At least it looks better than the Kindle, right?

What’d you think? Are you lining up to get one, or will you wait and hope all those early adopters will bring Apple enough cash that they can announce a better, faster, cheaper version next year?

An infographic of famous high school film nerds

I, of course, just clipped out my favorite film nerd (Lloyd Dobbler from “Say Anything”) from this Time Line of Film’s Favorite High School Nerds. You’ll have to look at the whole graphic to see if your favorite is there. Did he/she make the cut?

CMS Smackdown: All over but the plug-ins

Agency Primer: CMS Shootout – Wordpress and Expression Engine from The Nerdery on Vimeo.

Promotors of last week’s Wordpress vs. Expression Engine webinar hinted that there could be blood. Two Nerdery programmers trained hard for this CMS bout. They drank raw eggs and ran stairs, and then a nationwide audience of agencies tuned in for what turned out to be a rather amicable exchange. Or was it? Watch Thursday’s rematch above.

Here is a list of recommended plug-ins for  both content management systems, with Wordpress plug-ins submitted by (in this corner) Anthony Lukes, and Expression Engine plug-in faves from (challenger) Brian Litzinger.

Wordpress  plug-ins:

Dagon Form Mailer - This is my (Anthony’s) personal favorite because it’s easy to customize and it supports file attachments. Another favorite of mine is Contact Form 7.

Flutter CMS - This plugin allows for easy assigning of different data types and for easy custom page templating.

NavT Navigation Management Plug-in - This plug-in allows you to manage and customize your site’s navigation system.

Inline PHP - This allows you to insert php code into the text editor.

All in One SEO Pack - Pump up your SEO. Customize page titles, meta keywords, and descriptions. This works out of the box and can be fine-tuned for super-users.

Google XML Sitemaps - Generates an XML sitemap of your site to better your search rankings with Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.

Akismet (comes with Wordpress) - This helps keep spammers from posting comments on your blog.

NextGEN Gallery - Great photo gallery plug-in. Not an essential for every site, but this is a really well built plug-in that’s too good not to mention.

And in this corner, recommended Expression Engine plug-ins:

Structure - It forgoes the current template_group/template setup and creates “static” and “listing” pages that can be edited through a tree sitemap view. Traditional page style content and multiple entry pages can live within the same area.

Image Sizer - Resizes images as specified in EE tag and caches the resized image in the cache folder. If you update the original image, a new resized version is created. If the image is not on the server the tag will not return anything. The architecture is setup to only process images when needed.

FieldFrame - A framework for rapid development of fieldtype extension, FieldFrame will be included as part of EE 2 core when 2.1 is released.

nGen File Field - nGen File Field is a field type for the FieldFrame framework that adds a custom field type allowing you to upload files from the Publish/Edit interface, and also functions as part of the FF Matrix. This extension is useful for creating galleries and downloading libraries.

“No mas … no mas.” – Roberto Duran