Well, it looks like the shady practices of my former employer have finally been noticed by the right people. The Ohio Attorney General, Jim Petro, has filed suit against The Gift Assistant:

The Enquirer – Ohio Attorney General Suing Norwood Company

In a lawsuit filed in Hamilton County last week, Petro’s office is asking a judge to order the company at 1776 Mentor Ave. to cease violating the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act. It says the Gift Assistant used unfair and deceptive methods to take at least $42,000 from at least 250 people. Petro wants the money returned and the company fined $25,000 for each violation of the law.

Hopefully this will get some money back to the hundreds of people who were scammed. The two owners had this coming and I am glad they will finally be answering for the crap that they pulled.

I’m proud to announce one of my first code releases:
Amazon Showcase WordPress Widget

Amazon Showcase is a WordPress Widget for showcasing items from Amazon. Simply enter the ASIN/ISBN number of any product and optionally enter an Associate ID for earning commissions. The product image will be displayed with a link to the product detail page on Amazon.com.

This widget was born out of my own need for a simple way to add Amazon products to my sidebar. As you can see, I am using it to display the book that I am currently reading. Amazon Showcase makes use of Amazon’s Web Services, Representational State Transfer (REST) and a little PHP XML parsing magic to grab products from their catalog dynamically.
So enjoy, and please offer feature requests, I plan on expanding this widget in the near future!

I don’t like to get into political stuff too much, but this “Immigration by the Numbers” video explaining the effect of immigration in the United States is just outstanding. A must watch for anyone who lives in the U.S.

Roy Beck‘s celebrated demonstration of the population consequences of current U.S. immigration policies has entertained and shocked all audiences across the country. This video is packed with the facts and analysis that make moral and practical sense of a complex and highly contentious issue.

Immigration by the Numbers at Google Video

37 Signals, the superstar web application company responsible for Basecamp and Backpack (among others), has released their fantastic book “Getting Real” in two additional formats, including a free online version. You can now read the book for free online (HTML), purchase a PDF for $19, or purcahse a printed edition of the book for $29 from Lulu.com.

Getting Real details the business, design, programming, and marketing principles of 37signals. The book is packed with keep-it-simple insights, contrarian points of view, and unconventional approaches to software design. This is not a technical book or a design tutorial, it’s a book of ideas. Anyone working on a web app — including entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, executives, or marketers — will find value and inspiration in this book. 37signals used the Getting Real process to launch five successful web-based applications (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, Writeboard, Ta-da List), and Ruby on Rails, an open-source web application framework, in just two years with no outside funding, no debt, and only 7 people (distributed across 7 time zones). Over 500,000 people around the world use these applications to get things done. Now you can find out how they did it and how you can do it too. It’s not as hard as you think if you Get Real.

I highly recommend picking up a copy of this book if you are interested in development methodology that breaks the rules of traditional software development.

I wish these primers had been around when I was starting up in the web development world. I still plan on devouring every single resource listed in these articles. From A List Apart:

The following websites come from ALA staff recommendations. Many of these are the sites that we’ve used — and still use — to improve our own skills. We hope this list can serve as a starting point for a larger collection of resources for fledgling web designers and developers.

The ALA Primer: A Guide for New Readers 

The ALA Primer Part Two: Resources For Beginners

I’ve been at it again over at Listible. This time I have started a list for Standalone Weblog Clients. A Weblog Client is software you run on your local machine that lets you post to your blog via an XML-RPC interface. Weblog clients are often an alternative to the web-based “rich text editors” that come with most blogging applications. This is a list of the most popular weblog clients available. Enjoy!

I have decided to undertake a 30 day trial of Vegetarianism. More specifically I will take the baby step of Lacto-ovo Vegetarianism, which means that I will eat almost anything but meat, fish, and poultry. I have several reasons for trying this:

• Improved eating habits — Even though meats are not necessarily bad for you, substituting meat with fruits and vegetables will improve my eating habits overall.
• Improved energy and health — I am hoping that a focus on fruits and vegetables will increase my overall level of energy. This energy will keep me more upbeat and alert during the day and help me to exercise more effectively.
• Improved will power — Undertaking a 30 day trial, regardless of the trial, will help me to hone my self-dicscipline and will power.

I will blog about my progress, so subscribe or check back often for updates. As a person raised as a meat-eater, this should provide a good litmus test for anyone considering this lighter appetite.

37 Signals writes about a new method of doing basic multiplication by hand. Now I officially feel old. It has been awhile since I last multiplied by hand; I’m sure I will become intimate with these new techniques in the event that I have children of my own.