favicon for iPad and iPhone!

Web peoples:

Remember the exhilaration you felt when you figured out how to make your first, cool favicon.ico?


... or your first "optimized for IE/NS 3.0" website?

... or when you locked yourself in the lab, deciphered the DOM, and emerged 2 days later with your first hand-coded DHTML creation?

... when you through 87a to the wind and produced your first animated gif89a?

Well, time marches on, and we've moved far beyond the old, gray "Netscape Now" icons, to a new world of shinier, sparkly buttons... on touch screens.  BEHOLD!


How to make a bookmark icon for the iPhone or iPad:
from http://lifeinthefastlane.com/2010/07/the-little-button/

1. Create your icon…

With the advent of the iPod Touch, Apple updated their devices to allow users to add website links to their home screen. These home screen icons are created by taking a thumbnail screenshot of your current view on that website. Pretty cool, but…boring!
Now Apple has provided web site owners the ability to specify an icon to be used in-place of the screenshot (apple-touch-icon.png). You can also explicitly specify which icon should be used when the iPhone’s browser visits your site by specifying a ‘link‘ tag in the portion of your page’s html.
There are lots of websites which help generate a favicon for your website…but my favourite is Flavor Studio Tools and Resources. Note that the size of an iPad Home Screen icon is 72×72 pixels, so you may need to re-size the downloaded images.

This icon is also compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch. The size of the icons on those displays is 57×57, but you do not have to create an alternate version. Those mobile devices will shrink down your 72×72 icon automatically. (Of Zen and Computing)

2. Upload the icon to your blog/website

• Upload the completed icon to your site as a transparent PNG named apple-touch-icon.png .
• It is recommended that you place the file in the root public accessible directory…but I didn’t know what that was, so uploaded as a media file and copied the file url to complete the final stage.

3. Add some code

• To allow the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad to know where to find you icon you need to add the following tag code in the section of your HTML header:

link href="http://www.website.com/apple-touch-icon.png" rel="apple-touch-icon"

(except you need the <> and the closing link tag- having trouble encoding for blogger)

• Change the url value of the href attribute to reflect the location of your site’s icon and change webiste.com to your own domain name.

from:
http://lifeinthefastlane.com/2010/07/the-little-button/

-Crockett Dunn
Owner CDLLC

Analisa & Crocket Summited Mt. Tallac... who'd a thunk it?

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This just in: photos from the real photographer in the family:





MORE HERE:

http://www.flickr.com/drmarkidunn/







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Newsflash.

Pictures of our own hike/climb, here (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91701&id=531650997). Look at the freakin' terrain!!

# # #
A few hours ago Analisa and I just climbed a mountain.

I had NO idea what I was getting into. Analisa said we were going "hiking."

Just look at that monster!

Seriously, though, I'm glad I had the experience and look forward to many more... I'm hooked!

In another life, I have ice-climbed tethered to a crevasse-crossing team, camped on glaciers, canoed/portaged hundreds of miles of the border waters in the Canadian Quetico wilderness area, survived being trapped by mudslides from a tropical storm in NC's Pisgah forest, hiked Washington, Oregon, climbed Mt. Baker, and so on, etc.



However . . . my lifestyle has become, let's just say, a *bit* more sedentary as of late. I run a web technology gig (cdLLC) that involves lots of management via phone & email.

Translation: Much time is spent with my rear-end planted to a chair (when I'm not working from the world-famous internet treadmill workstation). I digress...

This was a BRUTAL hike/climb.

It's only five miles up, but at times, the trails seemed as if they were actually "booby-trapped" to roll an ankle or send a hiker plummeting off a rock face!


Loose rocks everywhere. Some small, creating the effect of hiking a trail paved with marbles, and others large and jagged.

And every rock is a surprise :). "Are you a loose rock, a wobbly rock, perhaps a foot entrapment rock?"

Snowbanks turning the trail into mud at the narrowest point where there is sheer mountain wall drop-off to the other side. "Keep your hands on the snow and lean AWAY from the death drop."

Here is a website that tells the story of our journey (exact same trail). Read it if you want, but definitely check out the photos. They are amazing panoramas of the view, and great shots of the unique rock formations

http://www.tahoebackcountry.net/hiking/desolation/tallac.htm (credit: all photos on this post are from the aforementioned site)

It was not until we returned that I discovered this hike is rated a 10/10- the black diamond of climbs.

Now I feel victorious and am psyched up again.

Kilimanjaro, here I come!

Oh hey- I almost forgot. ATT HSPDA net access is available at the summit and many other trail segments, so you can video chat to prove you really made it. Or bring along the laptop, set up camp, and park your mobile office there for a few days.

Good times

"a weekend of record breakers!" or, "Better Wang Parameters!"

One of the simple joys of being an IT professional is watching the spam/counter-spam wars, specifically, the metaphors, synonyms, and other methods used by the snake-oil sales-people to slip through the spam filters.

Just two days after announcing Crock-Town's new, most awesomest t-shirt, I am pleased to announce the following.

After almost two years, the #1 silliest spam subject, "your penis make shadow like tree," http://crockettdunn.blogspot.com/2007/09/penis-make-shadow-like-tree.html, is being bumped to #2.

Our new winner?

Based on pushing the limits of ambiguity and slang while still retaining comprehensibility:

"Better wang parameters!"

The subject of an email I received minutes ago.

[If only we could harness the power of these wordsmiths for good.]

Annoyed with Your Push-to-Talk Button? Re-map it to MS Voice Command.

Not exactly breaking news, but during this flight (Hello again Denver!), I just got around to re-mapping my ATT Tilt's bothersome PTT (Push to Talk) button. You'll need to backup your registry and be enough of a tinkerer to know how to edit the registry in Windows Mobile.

PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK. INCORRECTLY EDITING THE REGISTRY CAN KILL YOUR PHONE.

Background:

There is a button on the top left of the HTC Kaiser a.k.a. 8125. With the, "ATT Tilt," branded version of this phone, this button, when depressed, asks something along the lines of, "Are you sure you wish to activate Push-to-Talk? Additional service charges will be incurred."

I'm not a walkie-talkie, "where you at?" kind of guy, so I do not wish to activate and purchase PTT Service. Heck, even if I wanted that capability, I could probably find some freeware IM/Voip app to work just fine, rather than purchase a new "service."

This reminds me- post a comment if you would like me to create a blog post about the Internet Connection Sharing app already built into Windows Mobile. There is no need to purchase a separate "computer" data plan and PC card. With a standard USB cable and Windows Mobile, the functionality is already available.

Here is the good stuff:

REMAP PTT, FROM,
http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-335995.html

Worked for me. You have to read the whole post.
For my own purposes as well, here are the consolidated steps to take. Until someone improves on this, I keep all this stuff in a directory so I can reconfigure my device as necessary. Here goes...

I think the trick is the PTT settings take precedence when the device boots up so delete the PTT registry settings under HKLM/Services/PTT.

Delete the whole sub tree, then
From HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Shell\Keys
Add a new key called "40C6"Add a string under the key called "Name" with the value "Button 6"

Add a new key called "40C7"Add a string under this key called "Name" with the value "Button 6 (hold)"
(Note, do not enter the quotes, thare are to delimit what belongs in the registry entry)

Go to the Buttons settings and assign a program to the new entries. [Crockett note: I use MS Voice Command].

Do a soft reset [Crockett note: use a paperclip or pen to hit the reset button in the tiny pinhole on the bottom of the phone, or take the battery out] which will remove the PTT settings from the buffer and enable your key changes.

Thanks for all the help.

I'd say the only caveat is if you some day want to use the PTT features, it would be a good idea to take an inventory of what is under the PTT node in the registry.

Crockett Dunn [via Mobile Device]