dangerouslyawesome

I'm Alex Hillman, the co-founder of IndyHall and a guy who makes things better in Sunny Philadelphia.

I work on Beanstalk, Postmark, and DynamicWear.

I think technology is cool, but people are infinitely cooler.

Another OpenID Adoption

Jadedpixel just announced that they have openid enabled their shopify administration panel. I wish I had more time to write about this, but since I don’t I’ll keep it simple by saying: way to go guys!

Shopify keeps continuing to impress me as they roll out new features for me to offer to my customers. And the developer forums? Filled with some really smart people. One of my favorite niche development communities to follow. Not to mention that they’ve open sourced their ActiveMerchant rails module, and the Liquid templating language. These guys know how to do things right, and how to keep things going. Three cheers.

Keep kicking ass, JadedPixel.

[tags]Shopify, OpenID, JadedPixel, kudos[/tags]

i blog often

but i twitter often-er.

Last night i was having one of my “cant sleep, must code” fits and decided to whip up my own version of a twitter sidebar widget. Now, on the right of every page, you’ll see “what i’m thinking” followed by a short burst of thought.

Twitter, for those of you somehow unfamiliar, finds a happy medium between stream of conscious and blogging. In this particular case, i have 140 characters to answer the question, “what are you doing right now”. The really cool part is it’s updatable via SMS, AIM/GTalk/Jabber, or the REST interface provided in their API. So you get microblogging, on the run.

Anyway, my little mash together utilizes the twitter personal feed, and SimplePie for mega-simple feed parsing.

Code example after the break.

Read more →

Illadelph' Representin'

Are you a Philadelphian traveling to Austin this weekend like I am?

Show some Ben Franklin Pride and put your name on this list so we can all get together and do something cool.

[tags]philadelphia, SXSW, meetup[/tags]

Packing for SXSW

Seems to be the buzz around this week…everyone in the industry is either getting ready for South by South West, or regretting the decision to not go (Sorry Geoff and Alex). My flight leaves in a little over 48 hours, and of course I haven’t started packing…but Eric Meyer’s twitter above got me thinking…

When I go on a snowboarding trip, I know what to bring because I’ve been before. But the first time I went, I went without some of the right gear and was proverbially (and literally) left out in the cold. My goal for the next 48 hours is to figure out the most efficient packing regime.

Thanks to expectable delays, I’ll NOT be checking luggage. Which limits me to 1 rolling suitcase and my backpack, which doubles as a laptop case for my Macbook Pro. Besides clothing, which I can efficiently pack 5 days worth…what should I be bringing? Things that are obvious to me:

• Laptop
• Cell Phone
• Digital Camera
• iPod? (doubles as extra hard drive)
• Chargers for all of the above
• Business Cards (and lots of em)
• Notepad + Pen(s)
• One flashy red zoot suit (uh, parties?)
• Leftover mardi-gras beads (uh, parties?)

What am I forgetting? If someone doesn’t jump on my question here, I’ll be sure to publish a guide post-conference for next year, and for all newbies to come.

[tags]SXSW, packing, toolkit, travel, ridiculous suit[/tags]

Barcamp of 1727

How cool is this: Last night I met with the guys at P’unk Ave about some potential coworking opportunities, as well as other community outreach exercises. During our discussion, they talked about something called Junto…apparently Ben Franklin had something very similar to Barcamp here in Philadelphia back in the 1700s. According to WP, they shared views on things like “morals, politics, and natural philsophy”. Furthermore, from what it sounds like, Benny boy would be pretty proud to know that the inhabitants of his city were working together towards “mutual improvement” via Barcamp and coworking.

I’m literally floored by this, its some of the most exciting history about my city I’ve ever read. If this isn’t inspiring…I don’t know what is.

At any rate, the conversation started with Geoff and Alex @ P’unk Ave (which is short for Passyunk Ave, one of the oldest roads in the city that they live and work on…very clever) was awesome, and I’m excited to see what kind of collaboration these guys can get involved with. We’re already talking about a Barcamp (P’unkCamp?), and they have some great ideas of their own to use their space for the whole community. Kick-ass!

In the mean time, don’t forget to check out CreativeCamp, whose 3rd incarnation is being held on March 31st (just a few weeks away!). Sign up, come hang out with us, and get down with some Junto of your own!

[tags]inspiration, Junto, coworking, barcamp, Philadelphia, Ben Franklin[/tags]