I received an e-mail a few days ago from Mockingbird, the wireframing online software which I constantly used for my project: Mockingbird will launch on August 15th, 2010 Hurray? No. According to their blog post about the launch and a few posts on Twitter, most users seem quite disappointed and they do have a point. Some say the pay-per-month model doesn’t work for them, as they prefer to...
TeamLab vs Basecamp: A Project Management Duel
Team. Team, team, team.. How good is your team if you can’t manage it? This reminds me of an IT Crowd episode: Well if you can’t work as a team you’re all fired! .. Hello security? Everyone on floor 4 is fired. As some of you already know, I run a little web development startup here in Moscow called Frumatic and during the past few months we’ve been struggling to get our...
Highcharts: Pure Javascript Charts API
I was working on a project lately that involved charts and graphs which had to be interactive, lightweight and somewhat complicated. I looked through quite a lot of different chart APIs, and for some time thought that I’d have to go with Open Flash Chart which is good and simple, but it was Flash. There’s nothing wrong with Flash, but Flash is what makes it more complicated to modify...
5 Awesome Links for Web Designers & Developers
It’s July and it’s so damn hot back here! I think all the possible new records have been set last week in Moscow. Thank god we had those new air conditioners install in the office before the heat wave, otherwise it would’ve been impossible to work. Anyways, haven’t tweeted much this week, but I did go through my RSS feeds, and here are some interesting links for web design...
Now with the Facebook Like Button!
Obviously, the Facebook Like button is one you’d like to implement inside your blog, website or whatsoever. I did too, although I am quite late as everyone has theirs for ages, but why not share some thoughts about it and the whole social widgets riot? As we all know (or maybe suspect) the web is going social, and what value is your blog if your readers can’t share your article with...
Driving the 960 Grid System
CSS frameworks are unflexible, overbloated and confusing. Whoever said that, never used a CSS framework, or at least the 960 Grid System. I used to think that too, some time ago, but I did use the 960 Grid System to draw my templates. I didn’t care about the CSS, the columns, etc. All I used were the Photoshop templates with a preset grid of 960 pixels, which was pretty convenient for...
WordPress 3.0, Social Media in Russia, Hiring & Coffee
So, there’s quite some interesting stuff going on around here and let’s of course begin with WordPress. Yes, WordPress 3.0 has been released, some blog posts of mine got even more visibility and I’ve been interviewed on the WordCast Conversations show – thank you so much @kymhuynh and @lorelleonwp. I don’t know when the show will air, but Kym promised to let me know...
How To: Retrieve a User ID via SOAP in SugarCRM
Following the Lead Generation Forms with WordPress and SugarCRM post, I came across the need to assign the generated lead to some person in the CRM. It would be easy if you could do it by simply using usernames in the system, but unfortunately usernames may change, but user IDs do not. User IDs in SugarCRM are stored in a 36-byte alphanumeric string with symbols, which is easy to capture from the...
Renting an Office in Moscow: A Case Study
It’s been a few months now since we started looking for an office here in Moscow. We didn’t ask for much as we’re a startup. All we were looking for is some lousy 50 sq meter office not too far away from the center. The story dates back to February when we decided to move out of our expensive 13 sq meter office in South Moscow. We were quite sure that we’ll be able to find...
Lead Generation Forms with WordPress and SugarCRM
It took me quite some time to get around this, but I finally managed to get it working. As you might have heard, SugarCRM has a Community Edition, which is open source and free of charge. It’s a very neat tool to play with and it’s functionality will suit most SMEs and maybe some corporations. I started playing with Sugar a few months ago, mostly with the modules functionality. Cannot...