Whoa. Read this and then come back and tell me how on earth we’re going to keep ahead of malicious activity on the Internet if something so simple as an RSS feed could be hijacked and manipulated. To be honest, I would normally doubt such a thing could even make sense — but then again, […]

…that “simplicity” as a buzzword is increasingly going to become heavily overused and lose its meaning over the next few months as everyone tries to jump on the “Web 2.0″ bandwagon. Think about it. What is simple, anyway? Simple for some people is complex for others, and on the other hand, simple for some people […]

I hope you folks had a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving! Mine was quiet and peaceful, which I suppose is the best thing to have for a holiday.
News from last week that is really news for this week: PHP 5.1 is out! I have a feeling this is going to be as significant a release as […]

Hi folks, just wanted to let you know I’m recovering from a bad cold I got a few days ago, and now we’re heading into Turkey Season (in the USA, that is). Needless to say, I probably won’t be giving the Idea Basket much attention until next week.
However, I wish you all the best on […]

It’s all in the news these days — especially after Microsoft’s recent Windows & Office Live announcements: software as a service, made possible either via advertising revenue or small scheduled payments. As long as you, or the advertisers, pay, the software is available. Once the money goes bye-bye, the software goes bye-bye.
Purchasing software for a […]

This topic has been discussed to death already, and I’m sure that won’t change going into next year. But I do want to comment on something which I think is meaningful not just to this business move but to everything we do in life.
This change of attitude on Apple’s part is a triumph of pragmatism […]

When I start working on a new design template for a project, one of the first things that I approach is crafting the right texture. I’ve learned that a static visual presentation can have a visceral, animated feeling simply from the texture. And I don’t mean just the patterns and materials that you use, but […]

I’m posting this from a very nifty little Mac OS X Dashboard widget called WordPressDash. Just hit F12 (or whatever your Dashboard activation key is), type in some text, and hit PublishPost. I envision myself using this regularly rather than the standard WordPress browser interface, just because I like widgets and it’s easy to get […]

As you can see in the sidebar at left, one of the current projects I’m working on is xajax, an open source PHP library that helps developers write Web sites using AJAX. What makes it special? It allows you to call PHP functions directly from Javascript using an XML-based “bridge”, and then allows you to […]

Greetings, dear reader. If this is your first time visiting the Idea Basket, I bid you welcome. If you visited this site in the past when the previous incarnation was still active, welcome back! It’s very exciting to have this new blog up and running, and I hope this one lasts. My biggest problem in […]