I believe that many of us Americans share this mentality. Just listen next time you’re on the bus or at a party. We all have ideas on ways to improve what’s going on around us. Some of them are great ideas and others are terrible. I got tired of hearing all these opinions and would wish to myself that people would stop talking and start doing. Then I took my own medicine. I never really valued my own opinions about government. I felt that I was too uninformed to be able to be effective and I may still feel that way.

For me, this fellowship is about doing. Since we’ll be building apps for civic governments, I’ll use the iPhone/Android app markets as a metaphor. If every app developer decided that their app may not work 100% as they envision, could have a bug or no one would download it and therefor not develop that app, then we would never have apps let alone a platform to build them on. Every app developer has fears about their app yet they develop them, lots of ‘em. Today we have tens of thousands of apps, free and for purchase, available for download because the developer was able to move past their fears.

Worth-ish Idea

Now not all apps are created equal, some are high-worth and others are worthless. Without the worthless apps, we may not have any apps. Even “worthless” apps (see how I moved that into quotes) have great worth. Beyond all-or-nothing, “worthless” apps provide another useful purpose; users can use them as examples to create better apps or even hack worth into them (CatMapping anyone?).

I/we/you may have worthy ideas about how governments can function better. Get over your fears, whatever they may be, and get involved. I’m a designer by trade and when I read about what Code for America was setting out to do I was excited to see it happen and hesitant to apply because I didn’t know how I could fit in other than running photoshop for the real geeks. Since the start of this fellowship I’ve found an infinite amount of ways to get involved and am so elated to be a part of this movement.

Here’s the Ignite speech I gave in Philadelphia titled “The Dumbest Guy in the Room”.

Code for America IgnitePhilly talk from @peterfecteau from Tyler Stalder on Vimeo.

I was privileged to volunteer for ArtPrize 2009. I was a “way finder” and helped register people to vote. It was a blast and a smart way to view the inner working of the event. For ArtPrize 2010 I’ll be competing as an artist. What I have in store for my entry is a doosie.

I’ll be breaking theworld record for largest Rubik’s Cube mosaic mad eby a single person. I’ll be solving 1,750 cubes (most will be solved live at the event) and then configuring them into a mosaic of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I hope to certified upon completing the project. What’s more important is what I plan to do with the cubes once the event has wrapped up. I’ll be distributing them to classrooms across Michigan so that kids can learn about geometry and algebra in a fun and tangible way. The big hurdle is money. I need to raise $15,000 dollars to purchase the cubes, pay for shipping the cubes to classrooms, get GWR out here from London, and cover some miscellaneous costs. If you’re interested in donating check out my project at Kickstarter or check out the PixelPete2010 website.

So what is it about Think Vitamin that’s so damn special?

Top Quality Writing – The writer’s actually know what there talking about and back it up with excellent examples. Probably because they are all working professionals and know what it takes to write about design, development and business. Unlike this guy. It takes a lot to write a good article. These days every one blogs in one way or another, very few are any good at it.

The Freshest Perspectives – I pride myself in surfing the web to find the newest “trends” in web design/development.  It’s not easy to find something bookmarkable.  Carsonified has made a name for themselves in staying in front of trends and understanding what direction the industry is going in. They keep tabs on who’s making waves and a lot of the times, they’re the ones making them. I get a lot of inspiration from not only their site but the sites they send me too.

Panoramic View – There’s a lot of topics a web professional should read into. Frankly, that list is too big for one blog. Think Vitamin takes a look a three very important aspects of being a web professional: Design, Development and Business, all of which are connected back to each other. It’s very important for a blog to stay on topic and it’s something many do not adhere to, myself included.  Every one of Think Vitamin’s articles relates to their theme. If you’re like me and have a rather busy feed reader, you don’t want to see an article that’s off topic. I know when I go there, I’ll be taking something with me. Sometimes they help me write this blog.

God’s Honest Truth – One thing I stive to do here at Buttonpresser is tell it like it is. I’m not afraid to share my opinion. I’m not afraid to be myself. Yes, it get’s me in trouble. Think Vitamin does the same and I am wholeheartedly greatful. I have been trying to tell anyone who will listen about honesty and accountability on the web and how it attracts a lot of attention and feedback. Some businesses are so afraid of feedback, either bad or good. I don’t have a problem hearing about how wrong I am and neither does Think Vitamin.

How it works:

Font Burner uses sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) technology. In short, it hides your titles and replaces it with flash. By hiding the title instead of removing it, you retain all the information that comes with the HTML title. This is great for SEO because Flash has very little SEO and using it on a site means that it and everything inside it is invisible to search engines. One small downside is that you cannot select the text for cutting and pasting. Another downside, slightly more sinister, is that it replaces every heading tag, not just the titles. It would be nice if they could develop that into their next revision but I wont hold my breath.

How to use Font Burner:

There are two very simple ways to use Font Burner. The first, find the font you wish to use on the site and cut the embed code out of the font’s page. For instance:

<script src=”http://www.fontburner.com/fontburner.js” type=”text/javascript”></script> <script src=”http://www.fontburner.com/js/black/aardvark_bold.php” type=”text/javascript”></script> <!– sIFR fonts delivered by www.fontburner.com –>

Then paste this code before the body tag in your page’s HTML. That’s it. You can further customize the colors using CSS.

Secondly… Font Burner, after my own heart, has developed a WordPress plugin to make it even easier for WordPress users. Install the plugin, choose your font and colors and hit save. Now every page and every heading/title has been changed to your custom font. Installation of either will take 15-20 minutes and is pretty idiot proof. It could potentially clash with another plugin or script you might be running (I’ve seen nothing of this sort) but be sure to backup your site before tinkering. I’m using it on this site. Looks nice huh?

Now if only they can tap into a way to use commercial fonts and not just free ones…?

Pros:
- Consumers only pay for what they use.
- Computers only need enough to run internet connection and memory.
- Updates to software or hardware are preformed solely by the vendor.
- Issues will be fixed faster as bugs will be more trackable.
- Scalable to usage almost immediately.
- Business’ who are contributing to the cloud have lower overhead.
- Support will most likely be live or forum oriented.

Cons:
- Heavy use could cost more that actual product.
- Updates to software or hardware are preformed solely by the vendor.
- Security will need to be sure-compliant for large companies to be on board.
- Some entities may want to have software when it’s no longer available.
- Less face-to-face business interaction.
- Plugin and modifications will need to be regulated.

How this will effect blogging:
Unless you use text editing software such as Microsoft Office to write all your blog posts, there wont be a big change with blogging in a cloud environment. Blog designers, such as myself will see some tangible changes though, some from the open source sector of the internet. Sites such Aviary.com provide web applications based off of Adobe products (Photoshop and Illustrator mainly) that are free to use, however still in beta release. Sites like Kompozer offer an open source WYSIWYG editor that’s more user friendly than Dreamweaver. It’s not a far cry to predict that a Code/WYSIWYG Editor will show up as a web app. It could actually work more seamlessly that current software and tie directly into server space, eliminating upload and download time. There’s a lot to be said about open source by itself and I see it playing into cloud computing more and more. WordPress has educated a lot of people in the online community about how open source can be very profitable. Rolling that type of thinking into a cloud environment is a half step in a similar direction.

How will this effect Web 2.0
Web 2.0 will soon be Web 3.0 and cloud computing will be a big part of that transition. We’ll be bringing a lot of what we learned with us of course. We’ve refined the peer-to-peer connection with things like facebook, twitter, and linkedin. What we will see is privatizing and better content quality. Social networks that work more as country clubs could be very benefitial to professionals. Like minded groups that essentially work as industry related thinktanks could change a lot of the stodgy thinking that come to light in the recent recession. Realize with me that cloud computing wont be restricted to “computing” it could easily translate into a pletheora of different industries (ie. staffing… check out Scriptlance). Essentaill,y cloud computing can and should be cloud thinking, where a person reaches into the cloud and pull out what they need without effort. This is what I see Web 3.0 being.

I’m not working for or with MyFonts in any way so when I tell you it’s free, it is and all you need to do is register for their site and “buy” the font for $0.00. I’m going to see if I can submit the font to the sIFR project so I can use it through Font Burner and their WordPress Plugin. See the letterform sample below or just go right to the site.

Sworray is a way for people to create any type of party they can think of. If they can’t think one up, we’ll give them ideas. When they’re done thinking one up they’ll be able to create a custom invitation and then send them to all their friends on nearly every network you could think of. You can even send invites through the mail for a fee.

Sworray wouldn’t be possible without the OpenSource movement. Sworray is an amalgamation of different OpenSource code. Thje infrastructure is comprized of a WordPress MU installed with BuddyPress. This is the framework and the majority of the functionality. There’s also a number of plugins that help keep things running and add functionality. I found a super cool app called firef.ly that adds a totally awesome chat. I’m currently working on polishing up a number of things that will add even more functionality.

I designed buttonpresser.com originally in XHTML. I had decided that a commitment to blogging was no longer in my cards. I saw the error in my ways and decided to add one later. I looked around for a theme that looked like something I could tweak into shape but it just wasn’t there. I started to hack up a very simple theme but it got confusing and my style sheet looked like a code version of “Dueling Banjo’s”. It was nasty and wasn’t working and I knew that it would take me a long time to get it functional. I scrapped it.

I took the page that I wanted to emulate and it’s style sheet and opened them in Dreamweaver. I took the default theme included in every WordPress install and opened header.php, index.php, sidebar.php, and the footer.php files. I spent the next hour putting code form my original file into the appropriate php file. I did a “save as” on my original style sheet and replace the WordPress theme’s stylesheet. Vwah Lah! A basic theme based off of my XHTML pages. Another hour of tweaking some of the other files such as comment.php, single.php, and category.php. and I was finished. It was logical, and was pulling my css from the beginning which made it so easy.

Here’s a brief tutorial on how to set it up for your WordPress Blog:

- Go to http://www.jott.com and set up an account, it’s free and quick

- Enter in your info and agree to the terms of service

- Verify your email address

- Enter your phone number (you can add more numbers later)

- Call 1 866 JOTT-123 and it will activate your phone with your Jott account and start you on your first jott, to yourself.

- Go to the “Links” page in your Jott account and add WordPress

- Fill out the info for your blog and blog author and hit “Save”

- Now call 1 866 JOTT-123 and say “WordPress” when it asks you “Who do you want toJott?” Then Start your message.

Remember to speak clearly and in a place without a lot of background noise. Jott does a good job of picking out the right words but it’s a good idea to check the posts when you get back in front of the comp.

There’s a ton of usage with this web utility and voice posts to WordPress blogs is just the tip of the iceberg. I’d love to hear about how you’re using it.