400 Bad request

However, I’d never used Capistrano to deploy a web app before. It was always one of those other things that I would have to learn. But recently, with the re-launched TweetNI, I decided to sit down and figure it out.

It didn’t go quite as smoothly as I had planned so here’s a quick overview to help you get up and running.

What is Capistrano?

Capistrano is a utility and framework for executing commands in parallel on multiple remote machines, via SSH.
— GitHub

Sounds a bit complicated but in a nutshell, you run a command (or two) via Terminal (or Command Line) and your Rails app is ‘automagically’ up and running on your server.

If you’ve ever deployed a Rails app manually like I have before, you might have uploaded the files via FTP, then created your database in PHPMyAdmin, then ‘touched’ the restart.txt file via SSH (yep, so old skool).

Capistrano combines all this into a couple of commands.

Setup Capistrano

Assuming you have Terminal open on a mac, run the following commands:

1. Install the gem

gem install capistrano

2. Tell your app you want to deploy with Capistrano

cd your_app_folder
capify .

3. Configure deploy.rb

There is a new file for you to configure under /config/deploy.rb

I’m going to assume you’re *not* using SVN or Git for this project (it just so happens I didn’t use them for this project).

Copy and paste the following:

require 'bundler/capistrano'

set :application, "tweetni.com" # Your application location on your server goes here

default_run_options[:pty] = true

set :repository,  "."
set :scm, :none
set :deploy_via, :copy

set :checkout, 'export'

set :user, 'username' # Your username goes here
set :use_sudo, false
set :domain, 'tweetni.com' # Your domain goes here
set :applicationdir, "/home/#{user}/#{application}"
set :deploy_to, applicationdir

role :web, domain                 
role :app, domain                          
role :db,  domain, :primary => true 


set :chmod755, "app config db lib public vendor script script/* public/disp*"

namespace :deploy do
  
  task :start do ; end
  task :stop do ; end
  task :restart, :roles => :app, :except => { :no_release => true } do
    run "#{try_sudo} touch #{File.join(current_path,'tmp','restart.txt')}"
  end
  
end

Make sure you change your app folder, username and domain to your settings.

4. Setup your server

cap deploy:setup

You only need to run this command once.

Each time you deploy, SSH will ask for your password.

5. Deploy

cap deploy:cold
cap deploy:web:enable
cap deploy:migrations

You’re up and running

If everything went to plan you should be up and running.

From now on any time you make any changes you just need to run the following:

cap deploy

On Dreamhost

I don’t know if I did something wrong along the process but after step 5 I couldn’t get my app to run so I sent Dreamhost a little support question and they replied saying:

Sorry about that, I needed to create a symlink to bundle. Give it a try now and write back in if you’re still having an issue.

Not sure if this happens every time but try giving support a shout if it does.

Hope this is helpful to someone.

Further reading

• Deploy with Capistrano without SVN or Git
• Official Capistrano page
• Capistrano on Dreamhost

I recently tweeted looking for recommended Northern Irish iPhone apps. Based on a combination of the replies I got, the top 10 local apps from SyncNI and my own personal favourites, I’ve put together this list of apps from Northern Ireland that you should definitely check out.

1. Pocket Universe

Pocket Universe is an easy-to-use app that will help you learn constellations, bright stars and planets. You can literally hold up your iPhone 3GS/4 in front of you, and the app will use the built-in compass to display the same view of the sky you see – but one that’s complete with names and information.

Developer: Craic Design

2. Used Cars NI

Search Northern Ireland Used Cars for sale, Offers, Vans, Farm/Plant, Motorbikes, Caravans/Motorhomes, Salvage and Boats in an easy-to-use application.

Developer: Ecliptic Labs
Website: Used Cards NI

3. Shhmooze

Shhmooze helps you connect with the useful or interesting strangers around you. With Shhmooze you don’t need to ‘work’ a whole room – you can focus on getting to know the people you need to know – quickly and easily! Change the way you meet people with Shhmooze!

Developer: Shhmooze

4. Belfast Music

The Belfast Music iPhone app showcases past legends and contemporary inspirations that have shaped the music landscape of our city. Check out where Belfast legends grew up and cut their musical teeth, and check out the many venues that show off the present wealth of musical talent.

Developer: Filmtrip Ltd
Website: Belfast Music

5. Cool FM

Listen Live to Cool FM on your iPhone, at home, at work, on the move.

Website: Cool FM

6. Rory’s Story Cubes

Rory’s Story Cubes is an invitation to shared creative thinking, just open-ended enough to encourage spontaneity and humor, just structured enough to maintain focus and challenge…Play it by yourself. Play it with friends. Play it with family. Play it at a party. By all means, play it.

Website: Rory’s Story Cubes

7. NI Job Finder

Search through Northern Ireland’s largest selection of jobs.

Developer: GCD Technologies
Website: NI Job Finder

8. Hector

When a hostage crisis erupts in the centre of Clappers Wreake, only one man has the diplomatic finesse to defuse a simmering situation before it boils over into a stew of butchery and bloodshed: Detective Inspector Hector.

It’s not for kids.

Developer: Straandlooper
Website: The Hector Files

9. Rock Out

Think air guitar meets the real thing. A simple interface ensures you can feel the rhythm, follow the beat and rock out to the music in true style.

Developer: The Design Zoo
Website: Rock Out Legend

10. Irish FA

Get the latest information from inside Northern Ireland football.

Developer: Paper Bag
Website: Irish FA

Bonus: Lookaly

Added as a bonus since this is the one I’m associated with. Lookaly helps you find the best places and services in your area based on reviews from others.

Developer: Ecliptic Labs
Website: Lookaly

More apps from Northern Ireland?

Apologies if I forgot any obvious ones or overlooked your own app. There are a lot more that I’ve missed but I’m more than happy to add them to the list here.

• Go Explore NI
• Grand Opera House
• Media Lightbox
• My Webcam
• Property News
• Skunk
• The Ulster Orchestra

If you know any good iPhone apps from Northern Ireland or have developed one yourself, leave a comment below with the link and I’ll add it here.

I thought it was about time I updated this list with any new apps I’ve started using but turns out I’ve been using pretty much the same lot since then.

Here are 5 new apps I’ve been introduced to during that time and now use daily.

1. Google Chrome

Firefox was once my choice but for some reason it started running very slow for me. I’d especially find YouTube videos very jumpy. So one day I tried out Chrome and absolutely loved it. It’s light weight, fast and trim.

After I sourced a few extensions I use often (namely Delicious and EyeDropper) I fully switched over my default browser.

Chrome also renders with the WebKit engine so you get all the nice CSS3 and HTML5 goodies (that also come with Safari).

I still tend to keep Firefox open though. It’s hard to beat that Developer Toolbar and Firebug. I also prefer the autocomplete that comes with the Firefox web address bar.

If you’re asking “What about Safari?” I never really got using it – an earlier version used to crash on me quite a lot which put me off it.

2. Mailplane

Only started using this recently for managing emails. I have 4 different GMail accounts for different domains that I was continually checking and had tabs open in the browser for (I wanted to keep them separate).

Mailplane is a desktop app but with the same look and feel and interaction as GMail has in the browser. It has some niceties like a top toolbar and ‘neater’ switching between accounts.

3. TweetDeck

This is my Twitter client of choice. Some people really dislike it, and to be honest it doesn’t scream of the typical nice UI you get with Mac apps, but I find it really handy for keeping track of multiple accounts and groups of people.

Also nice integration with other social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, even FourSquare.

4. MacJournal

MacJournal actually came part of a MacHeist bundle and I find it really useful for taking daily notes. I now use it to keep track of:

• Meetings (what was discussed)
• Events (what was talked about)
• Books (overviews and key notes)
• Workshops (what I learned)

Great for referring back to. In the past I would have recorded these things in a notebook, which would eventually be lost, forgot about or binned.

5. LittleSnapper

LittleSnapper was also part of a MacHeist bundle. Useful for taking screenshots of web pages and nice graphics then keeping them to hand for inspiration.

I wish I could say I had a really neat and nicely configured LittleSnapper for all areas of inspiration but I never get around to organising it (except once when I did it on a plane).

What would you recommend?

I’m sure there are tonnes of apps out there that I haven’t tried and should be using.

If you were to recommend one really good app that I haven’t mentioned, what would it be?

Here is a list of 10 websites (in no particular order) that I find useful and am constantly using. I’m also interested in what websites you swear by and use all the time, so please share in the comments below.

1. iStockphoto

iStockphoto is a collection of royalty free photos, illustrations, video and audio. You can search for these resources based on any keyword and purchase from only $1.

iStockphoto saves you time and money. Need a good photo for a website but don’t have the resources to setup your own photography shoot? iStockphoto will do the job, and you’ll be able to use the photos legally as they’re royalty free.

I find it really useful for illustration graphics. There are graphics available for $10 that could otherwise take you a day or two to design from scratch.

2. Instant Domain Search

Checks the availability of domain names using Ajax.

Very handy when you have a brain wave and need to check if the domain name is available.

3. Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine is the ultimate web design blog.

If you need to know how to do something, or need some inspiration, Smashing Magazine will undoubtedly have an article on it somewhere. All you need to do is search the site.

4. Stack Overflow

A question and answer site for programmers.

The great thing about Stack Overflow as opposed to other forums is there is no sign up required. And it has a great community around it that are always willing to help.

5. SEOmoz

SEOmoz is one of the best search engine optimisation related websites on the net.

I constantly find myself using the SEO tools available, especially Rank Checker that lets you check how your domains (and client domains) are ranking on each search engine for keywords.

6. Lovely Charts

With Lovely Charts you can create user flow diagrams and sitemaps.

A great little app for starting off a project and getting your website flow down to a tee. Free to use.

7. Balsamiq

Balsamiq lets you create wireframes.

It’s a quick way of doing up wireframes and it’s meant to look quick so that it’s obvious to the person you send it to that it is rough. Saves a lot of time and the online version is free.

8. Notable

Notable enables you to take screenshots and then make notes on top of the design.

Great way for teams to provide feedback on designs, super easy to use and lovely user interface.

9. Campaign Monitor

For email marketing. Setup, manage, send and analyse email campaigns.

Campaign Monitor provides an easy to use interface for creating and managing your email campaigns. Once your campaign is sent, it provides statistics on how many emails opened, bounce backs, unsubscribed etc.

Very good value for money at $5 per campaign +$0.01 per recipient.

10. Delicious

Delicious lets you bookmark and tag websites.

Use delicious to tag useful or inspiring websites you come across so you can come back to them when you need them.

Bonus: Dribbble

Still in ‘invite only’ mode, Dribbble is an app for designers to share sneak peaks of your work, which can then be liked and commented on by other designers.

There is some amazing work being showcased on Dribbble.

Bonus: TV Shack

Streams a load of movies and TV shows.

Not so specific to web designers but a good resource to catch up with the latest episode of Lost, 24 and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

What have I missed?

What websites do you use regularly that other designers will find useful?

Rather than listing everything that was talked about over the 2 day event I’ve put together some notes on things that stood out.

280 Atlas

Atlas is a development environment for building web/desktop apps with Cappuccino. Looks really easy to setup and should be available in November – check out the demo below.

PayPal Change How We Pay

PayPal are opening up their platform. What does this mean? Check out the ‘Anthem Video’ below.

Facebook Connect Wizard

Facebook now has an easier way for you to setup Facebook connect on your site. Check out Facebook Connect Wizard.

HTML5

Bruce Lawson gave a great talk on HTML5. I’m definitely a lot more excited about it now.

Check out HTML5 Demos for some cool examples (best viewed in Opera).

Go Test It

Go Test It is a useful tool for running website tests across various browsers. Sign up for a free trial.

Other speaker notes

• Addison Berry – Make your app ‘open’, the more open it is the more you will have people contributing for free
• Osama Bedier – Remove friction and enable innovation
• Chris Abad – praise your passionate community, incentivise users to market for you, make use of viral channels (e.g. Twitter updates)
• Robin Christopherson – 80% of Twitter is from mobile devices, captchas = 7% loss in conversions
• Alex Hunter – Be emotionally invested in your brand and be willing to risk your reputation on your app
• Lynne d Johnson – 35% of adults now have Facebook profiles
• Dave McClure – Less = more, remove features, focus on UX, make fast iterations and measure goals

As far as I know the videos of each talk will be uploaded shortly.

Met lots of great people at FOWA, all doing really interesting things. If there’s an opportunity for you to attend a future FOWA, take it :)

It’s an extra field

For me, I don’t think you do need to confirm your password. It’s an extra field to fill in therefore it takes extra time to complete sign up, so the more fields there are to complete the more I’ll think twice about signing up.

But what if I misspell my password?

A password field will be starred out i.e. you don’t see what you’re typing, which means you could easily make a mistake and submit the wrong password without knowing.

This is where the ‘Forget your password‘ function comes in handy, which is an inconvenience but will have you up and running again with your old/new password in a couple of minutes.

Sign up forms with confirm password

WuFoo

GMail

Basecamp

Sign up forms without confirm password

Twitter

Facebook

Tumblr

What you think on Twitter

What’s everyones thoughts on confirm/verify password fields on sign up. Are they necessary?

I’d say if you have a FOOLPROOF password reset mechanism it’s ok, but remember users are always the weak link.

Annoying and not needed if there’s decent ‘forgot your password’ functionality later in the game.

yes! either that or do what neilsen suggests and make password fields plain text… :o

Confirm/Verify just a nuisance to me, I use 1Password or Textexpander to fill that in, so it just makes me paste twice

They are useful, but not necessary, somehow it looks unfriendly, like mistrusting the user.

Unnecessary. The iphone Password system is good. You see the char you typed for 1 sec then it disappears

I despise them. Just make sure they have a means of getting back in if they do manage to mess it up :)

They don’t bother me so much, handy for the odd times when a typo is entered into a password field during a rushed sign-up.

Yes. A large portion of support calls to clients regarding log in issues were reduced when we introduced a p/word confirm field.

i would think so, just incase you mistype it =)

To confirm or not to confirm?

What is the best route to take if designing/developing a sign up form? Have an extra field to verify the password or forget about the extra field and assume if the user makes a mistake they can use the forgotten password link? Or is there something else about the confirm password field that I’m overlooking here?

Let me know what you think as a user and your reasoning behind your preference.

1. Push your content to other sites

Kevin Rose – Digg – The Future of News
Stuff that happens on your web app should be easily pushed and shared with other apps e.g. Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed

2. Monetize later when the community is built

Edwin Aoki – AOL – Web Apps Are Dead – Long Live Web Apps
Building the community and bringing people together is what matters. Build the web app based on your passion and then monetize.

3. Do stuff later when the user is gone

Joe Stump, Blaine Cooke – Digg & (ex)Twitter – Languages Don’t Scale
Queuing is a technique you can use to do stuff later when the user is gone therefore speeding up the immediate response. “Every large website has some sort of queuing mechanism”.

4. If you force users to supply info that doesn’t matter, you will get inaccurate data

Kevin Marks – Google – The Future of Enterprise Web Apps
Only ask the user for the info that matters to them (e.g. username, email, password). If you as for a zip code, for example, chances are you’ll get 90210 or 12345 – this information is worthless.

5. Plan to localize your app/social network

Kevin Marks – Google – The Future of Enterprise Web Apps
Containers provide a social context for your users and localization is a container already established geographically. If you localize your app it enables an easy way for people to form connections.

6. If they haven’t contributed yet, show them how

Alvin Woon – Plurk – The future of social app interface design
Every web app has novice and advanced users. You need to spend time with the novice users and educate them. When they register, show them how to do things. Expert users don’t need guidance, they’ll go off and do their own thing.

7. People love to look at data about themselves

Ben Huh – I Can Haz Cheeseburger – How to take your community to the next level
Info porn! Share info on a daily basis about your users and they’ll come back on a daily basis to check this data.

8. Make users contributors

Beh Huh – I Can Haz Cheeseburger – How to take your community to the next level
Let your users contribute – they’ll work for you for free (look at Wikipedia). Once you start paying people to contribute, they become employees and things get complicated and expensive.

9. There’s social value in knowing what your friends know

Bret Taylor – Friendfeed -The Future of your Online Presence
The data you provide should be relevant to your user. Even if you’re not interested in a particular subject, if 20 of your friends or family have read an article then you’ll want to read it too so you’re not left out.

10. Don’t prematurely Optimize

Elaine Wherry – Meebo – Scaling the Synchronous web
You can’t predict what’s going to happen your app so wait until it does happen and deal with it then, don’t waste your time trying to fix something that hasn’t happened yet.

Other areas of interest from FOWA

• Bun Huh’s lolcats were very popular (which, to be honest, I just don’t get)
• Kevin Marks made a good point: In Star Trek, why doesn’t the computer know what date it is? (Captain’s log stardate…)

Photos thanks to:

• Phil Hawksworth
• mauricesvay
• sprain
• Rain Rabbit
• drewm
• jimjarmo
• thecodefarm

As I work on my major Masters project (due December), and while doing the odd freelance job, I take inspiration from the likes of Carsonified and Contrast who have been known for their ‘drop everything else for a week’ approach to work on other projects, and I work on my own side projects.

Their approach to taking a week to focus on 1 new project (from start to finish) is great but working 1 or 2 hours a day on a side project is also beneficial.

Why bother with side projects?

Luck favors the people who try stuff - Guy Kawasaki

1. Take a break

Take a break from your normal routine and refresh your head. Exploring different ideas can get you out of a creative block and bring inspiration.

2. Expand your skill-set

Try out new frameworks, see what you can do with different APIs, test your design skills. The creative community never stops moving so you need to make sure you stay up-to-date.

3. Brand awareness – raise your profile

Whether you’re a freelance designer or a large corporation, side projects can help raise your profile simply by having your name associated with it.

4. Contribute to the community

It’s always good to contribute something to the community. It’ll be appreciated.

5. Have fun

You can have a lot of fun working on your own stuff because you’re in control of the brief and there’s no one to tell you what to do.

6. Passive income

It’s hard to beat an application that makes money while you sleep or get on with the rest of your life. You might not make a fortune, but a few extra bucks a week to fund your Saturday night on the rip is a welcome addition :)

7. Try stuff

If you want to be successful in life I believe you have to try stuff. If it works, happy days! If it doesn’t, learn from it and move on. “Luck favors the people who try stuff”, says entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki.

Where to start

a. Take notes

Take notes when you think of projects and put them on your to-do list. I carry around a small notebook in my laptop bag and constantly add ideas to my ‘Someday’ list in Things.

b. Talk to other creatives

Talking to others will spark new ideas.

c. Read

Read a book from an inspiring designer or look at a book of visuals to get ideas.

d. Mashups

APIs make it very easy to launch small apps. Look at all the Twitter mashups now available. Think of different uses for Google Maps, Flickr, YouTube.

e. What would you find useful?

Chances are that if there was a website or tool that you would find useful, then there are 100s or 1000s of people who would also find it useful.

What side projects are you working on?

A successful side project I co-founded was The Big Word Project and I’ve just launched an Irish web design gallery (Web Designire) which only took a couple of hours a day for 5 days to develop (read more about it here).

Please feel free to share the side projects you’re currently working on or have produced in the past. It would be great to have your input.

Back in June when I was converting from a PC to a MacBook Pro (best decision I ever made) I asked around to see what apps people recommended for the Mac. There are a lot of nice apps available for Mac OSX that aren’t available for Windows.

I’ve compiled a list of Mac Apps I have in my OSX dock that I use on a daily basis and should be useful to other Mac users and/or web designers.

1. Adobe Creative Suite

An obvious and primary requirement (I feel) all serious web designers should have. I couldn’t get through the day without Photoshop while Illustrator and Flash are constantly called upon. I hear Fireworks is good too, especially for compressing images, but I’ve yet to use it myself.

2. Transmit

Transmit is an FTP client for Mac. Edit remote files, synchronize, search, SSL, tabs; it covers all your daily FTP needs.

3. Coda

Coda is a light-weight all in one text editor. You can edit your code, preview your web page, upload to server (integration with Transmit), edit CSS and run commands in Terminal; all from within this one app. I would use Coda for front-end development.

4. Textmate

Textmate is another text editor that I prefer using for back-end development. Code completion, snippets, syntax colouring are some of the things I enjoy about Textmate along with ease of customizing fonts and colours.

5. CocoaMySQL

CocoaMySQL gives you an interface to work with your MySQL databases. This is a desktop alternative to PHPMyAdmin, which is a lot quicker and in my opinion a lot easier to operate.

UPDATE 13/12/08: CocoaMySQL has been abandoned and replaced with Sequel Pro. Works just as well and looks even better. Check it out.

6. MAMP

MAMP is an easy way to get Apache, MySQL and PHP up and running on your machine. Just by running MAMP all these three services will be up and running, no messing around in Terminal needed.

7. Things

Great app for getting things done. Set yourself project tasks and daily tasks and check them off as and when you get them done.

8. CSS Edit

A very good CSS editor. It allows for real time previews of your website and styles and is a very efficient app allowing you to easily find all styles being applied to certain elements.

9. Transmission

Transmission is used for downloading/uploading torrents over the net. Useful for sharing files with friends and colleagues (among other things)

10. MarsEdit

MarsEdit allows you to compile draft blog posts on your local machine before publishing them live on your blog. I use it daily to take notes on various blog topics I think of and then I can easily compile a blog post over the course of a week.

11. Skitch

I was only recently introduced to this by GoodOnPaper @ FOWA. Allows you to easily share images/screenshots on the web and using the Skitch editor you can add notes to your image or highlight areas of a screenshot. Very useful and saves having to load up Photoshop for simple tasks.

12. Parallels Desktop

You can run Windows XP or Vista on your Mac using Parallels. Handy for being able to test your websites in versions of IE (using Multiple IEs) and if there are any Windows only apps you need to use, e.g. Microsoft Access.

13. Office

A good old favorite for creating text documents, preparing slideshows or looking after sets of data. There are a few Mac alternatives, and of course online alternatives, but I personally prefer Office.

14. Paparazzi

Paparazzi takes full screenshots of webpages. The problem with Cmd+Shift+3 is that it only takes a screenshot of the visible screen. Paparrazi takes the whole height of the page, even below the fold, so it’s great for showing screenshots of your web designs.

15. Twitterific

Easily interact with Twitterland via Twitterific. Saves you having to make the trip to Twitter to see what’s going on as it can retrieve and send tweets for you.

Others worth looking at

• Firefox Firefox is a fantastic browser with fantastic extensions for web designers like Web Developer Toolbar and FireBug
• Pixelmator Cheap alternative to Photoshop
• Lineform Cheap alternative to Illustrator
• Flickr Uploader Easily upload your photos to Flickr
• Skype Have your conference calls for free over the web

What apps do you use?

Let me know what apps you find useful and you think should be included in the list above.