After my rant about the sheer ugliness of my website (c’mon, it was hideous, right?), I decided to vent out my frustrations and upgrade Joomla, play with some new components, and redesign my site. I have until Wednesday to get things in order over here, since I’m reserving Holy Week to do some serious maintenance on PhilMusic.com.

Well the good news is, this "ordeal" have forced me to start writing the template tutorial for Joomla. It's probably the most requested article in this site, and hopefully, I can do justice to it.

Anyway, if you got any suggestions for this makeover, feel free to send it over.

In websites (such as this) where posting anonymous comments is allowed, it is usually left up to the judgment of the website owner on what content (or comment) is fit for publishing.

There is a very recent incident regarding Kathy Sierra -- Java champion, instructor, author of Creating Passionate Users, and prominent blogger.

Initial reaction: Big deal. We ladies get these things all the time. Just learn to swat them off. Right?

But when I got the gist of the incident on Kathy’s website, I felt very cold. A photo of Kathy with a noose around her neck, comments on how they wish someone would slit her throat … Someone took the time. If those anonymous posters wanted to strike bad, well they succeeded. Because even I got affected. Real bad.

In MeanKids.org, there is a very disturbing blog post about the wife of Robert Scoble (more popularly known as Microsoft’s technical evangelist). The website has been temporarily redirected, although the cached page revealed contents that are enough to disgust anyone.

It is incidents like these which make me glad that I stuck to my guns & required member registration for commenting privileges in PhilMusic.com. It is a very big site -- and with millions of page views every month, it practically forced onto us the obligation to establish some form of monitoring & control.

We may have this right called freedom of speech, but it goes tightly bound with things called responsibility & accountability.

Show of hands: Who here uses Firefox’s search bar almost exclusively?

The search bar is that little search textbox on the upper right hand of the Firefox window. Just choose the search engine, type your search terms, hit enter, and the results will be displayed on your browser.

Firefox comes preloaded with Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Answers.com, Creative Commons, and I’m guessing, Wikipedia.

Add search engines. You can add items in your search bar. You’ll probably want Wikipedia & del.icio.us, but more can be found here.

Keyboard shortcut. A handy keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+K. This will automatically place the cursor on the search bar.

Removing search engines. If you want to remove some of the preloaded search engines, click on the dropdown button of the search bar, and select Manage Search Engines. Then select the search engines that you want to remove, and click the Remove button.

Open search results in a new tab. And let’s not forget Firefox’s about:config which allows your search results to open in a new tab. First, enter about:config in your address bar. Scroll down to browser.search.openintab. Then double click it to change the value to true.

Those engineers at Google are more right-brained than we thought. Below is the geeky way of convincing you to sign up for your own Gmail account.

Although this video may not be as homegrown as they would want us to believe (they are Google, after all), the effort is very much appreciated. Definitely worth a couple “awwws” and “hihihi.”

I wish I could just pull a fantastic layout & color scheme out of the hat.

I wish that Joomla has a built-in support for tags. "Joomla is supposed to be a CMS not a blogging tool." Blah blah, yada yada. You could practically see the smoke coming out of my ears whenever I come across someone whose narrow minded view of a CMS prevents Joomla from evolving to what it could potentially be. (Admittedly, for the past month, my need for tags have been so great that I've been contemplating on dumping Joomla altogether.)

I wish there are more fonts recommended for the web. Arial, Verdana, Courier, Georgia. Eeny, meeny, miny moe.

In the next few days, this website will be going a series of changes. Nothing major -- just a little tweak here & there. Hopefully it would be enough for me to transform the site that is more pleasing to my eyes.

Call me a perfectionist, call me obsessive compulsive. Care ko. I'm gonna revamp this baby.

Smart Communications launched Smart Decode yesterday. Although it's probably going to be used for a bunch useless promotions (Ringbacks? Seriously?), I just realized that this is actually The Solution to all the senseless typing of VAS ("value added services") commands.

Let me give you an idea:

"Type DUMMYKEYWORD space REGISTER space your FIRST NAME space YOUR LAST NAME space asterisk space YOUR ADDRESS space asterisk YOUR LANDLINE space asterisk, and send this to 999."

Sounds familiar, no? Of course it does. This is the language that we Earthlings have learned from Pluto. Coincidentally, this is the same language that content partners decided to use in order to confuse, er, help users in using their SMS-based mobile services.

Need to download a wallpaper?
Type DUMMYWALLPAPER space PHONE MODEL space WALLPAPER NAME, shake it to the left, jump ten times, and send to 999.

With Smart Decode, this insanity will pretty much be eradicated. The content partner will simply generate a code (which can be printed in their posters, fliers, and print ads).

When you, The User, see this code, all you have to do is take its picture using your phone's camera. Almost instantaneously you will be presented with a nice interface where you can fill in forms, download your operator logo, etc. -- all in human readable form.

The code is called an mcode ("mobile code"). It’s a 2D barcode which stores information in a bunch of dots.

But ooh-la-la, mcode is not just for those boring content partners who can't seem to make a decent mobile application. We regular users, The Much Cooler Ones, can have a little fun of our own:

• Contact information. Definitely a lot more hip than sending a vcard thru bluetooth. Make your friends take a picture of your mcode (which you conveniently printed out & kept in your wallet). Voila! Your contact info will automatically be saved in their address books.
• SMS message. You can have an mcode to generate a specific SMS message. You can also have it sent to a predefined number.
• URLs. Your mcode can contain the URL of your website. When your friends scan it, they will be shown a link (which they can click to launch your website in their phone's browser).
• Phone numbers. You can scan an mcode to automatically dial a specified phone number.

"Naku, kailangan ko tawagan si Procopio! Ano nga ba ang number nya?"
"Ito o. I-decode mo na lang!"

(And that, ladies & gentlemen, is the reason why no ad agency was stupid enough to hire me as a copywriter.)

In order to scan an mcode, you need to download & install Smart Decode (don't worry, you won't get charged for the download). Using your phone's browser, go to decode.smart.com.ph. Click on the link on the website to install the software automatically (no need to mess around with those jar and sis files).

Take note that you need to use your Smart cellphone to download Decode. You cannot download the application using a Globe or Sun SIM, or even your good ol' DSL connection.

Some observations on Smart's credit (give two points for Smart over here!):

• The application loads real fast even on a crappy Nokia 6600.
• It takes an average of 2 seconds for the software to "decode" the mcode.
• You can actually scan the mcode even if its tilted (it will just take a little longer to scan it).

There's something missing in the equation, though (gimme back those points, dear): The ability for users to create their own codes.

C'mon, Smart, share the love. Help us look cool with those mcodes in our pockets.

Let's try it out

I was able to generate my own mcodes only because I was a resourceful & nice little girl. Try it out below:

Check your Smart prepaid balance.

The chette.com URL

This is the most popular SMS I receive on my phone

Wow! Ang galing mo na mag-decode!

My contact info (goodbye vcard!)

Laugh out loud

Fireworks users don't need to feel left out. Or at least when it comes to the feed icon.

Previously only available for the Big Snobbish Graphic Editors (Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.), the color of your feed icon can now be customized using Macromedia Fireworks. You can download the file here.

Some Words

A feed icon is placed on websites (or content items) to indicate that the content is also available via web syndication ("feeds"). It was originally created for Mozilla Firefox's Live Bookmarks, but has been proposed to be used universally for feeds. Take note that it is meant to be used for open formats (e.g., RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom, etc.)

Although the feed icon is not restricted to one standard color, it is still highly encouraged that you use its canonical color: orange. Color is a visual cue, and aids in the usability of websites.