I think that, aside from hilarious, his point of view is greatly accurate and is definitely worth a look at. So why don’t you?

Just click here!

~R

You can find it by clicking here.

One last piece of advice?
Be humble. But never look down at your own work, be proud of it.
And never think you can’t learn of someone. Everyone has something great to give, even if it’s not obvious. You just have to be patient.

-R

Being one to roam through several advice blogs on CV construction and interview preparation, I’ve found Buckley mentions some of the most sincere recommendations for the hiring process. Even though his article focuses on those fetching a career in coding and other computer expertise fields, I recommend this reading for everyone who is looking for a job in today’s competitive hunt.

However, if you are going to take my advice and invest your time to read his article… Please, please invest a bit more of your time to research at least some of the tools he mentions, understand why he talks about GitHub, LaTeX formatted CV’s, LinkedIn, etc. And think of a way this advice can be applied to your own field. Common sense is a very useful and quickly growing unused tool I’m sure you have access too.

To read the article I’m talking about, just click here.

-R

After reading the comments on his blog, from people who have been having trouble understanding how to migrate from Foursquare API v1 to API v2, using the foursquare-async library provided by jmathai @ github, I decided to make this small tutorial of my own. This article is based off joe’s article, I consider it only a revised version to refer to the Foursquare API v2.

Before diving into the code, you should know that for this article we use:

• Foursquare API v2 (Click for Documentation)
• Foursquare OAuth (Click for Documentation)
• Jmathai’s foursquare-async library (Which is absolutely awesome)

In order to use this article’s intel, you should be familiar with basic PHP usage. Small piece of advice, if you have problems copying and pasting this codes into your own php files, READ THEM. The code used in this articles is pretty easy to understand, and most of the errors you may catch are easy to detect if you just try to read the code. Use your common sense, please.

Lets get started.

First, you need to setup your environment (AKA what you need).

• A text/php editor. Depending on your OS, I recommend BlueFish, but you can use any text editor, really.
• A web server with PHP or a computer with LAMP/WAMP/MAMP (You get the idea).
• The foursquare-async library.  FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE: Make sure you are downloading the v2 version of this library. At the time Im writting this, there is no v3. But, you know, things change.
• A Foursquare account.
• Quoting Joe: A bunch of patience.

We will be creating two files to manage the authentication process:

• index.php
• callback.php

And we will need to upload the files from foursquare-async library:

• EpiCurl.php
• EpiFoursquare.php
• EpiSequence.php

So far so good? Great! Now please make sure you make the calls to the right place in your server AKA:

require_once(‘EpiCurl.php’);

Is not the same than:

require_once(‘Scripts/EpiCurl.php’);

Direct quote from Joe’s:

Note: Depending on your server configuration you may need to manually enable cURL support. I did this example using XAMPP and needed to turn it on. In the php.ini file (C:\xampp\php\php.ini) uncomment the line “extension=php_curl.dll” and then restart Apache. If you get an error like this later in the tutorial it might indicate you need to enable cURL.

Possible cURL error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function curl_multi_init() in C:\xampp\htdocs\test\EpiCurl.php on line 24

Let’s take a quick look at OAuth…

There are really two ways to connect to Foursquare’s API. However, one of them (the simple one) is not really secure and requires the user to give you their credentials. Since we live in a beautiful time where scammers live in every site and each time less users are willing to give up such information… Then we will not see this method in this article, but if you want to take a closer look, click here to read about basic access authentication.

The more recommendable and secure option is through OAuth authentication, and it is the option we’ll see in this article. quoting from Joe…

OAuth does a better job of protecting the user’s credentials and also gives the user greater control over what applications have access to their account. For example, instead of giving a random application your Foursquare credentials, you instead click on a link within the application that sends you to Foursquare to provide your credentials. Then Foursquare sends you back to the application with appropriate access keys for the application to use. Authenticating this way means that your credentials stay between you and Foursquare. The application you are giving access to only gets the OAuth access keys and doesn’t see or store your actual Foursquare credentials. It sounds complicated, but hopefully this tutorial will clear it up a little. OAuth is becoming more of a standard and as an end user you are probably already authenticating with different applications and web services this way.

So basically, we go through five steps to work with OAuth

1. Get request key and secret.
2. Provide link to the Foursquare authorization page.
3. The user will approve or deny the access and we will be redirected to our callback URL.
4. Get access key and secret code (and store it for future use).
5. Use access key and secret code to make API calls.

Now, register with Foursquare and get your key and secret.

Go to http://foursquare.com/oauth/register, login and fill the required information.

• Application Name:  OAuth Test
  • Give your application a name (My Foursquare App)
• Application Web Site:  http://localhost/
  • Provide the site where you will host your application (www.mysite.com/my-foursquare-app)
• Callback URL:  http://localhost/test/callback.php
  • This is the URL that Foursquare will send the user to after authenticating (www.mysite.com/my-foursquare-app/callback.php)

Click Register Application and you’ll get a new key and secret key, save them!

Note: If later on you are having a php error calling a “‘grant_type’ => ‘authorization_code’ not valid” or ANYTHING along those lines. Don’t break your head against a brick wall, it’s an OAuth problem and all you need to do is RESET to get a new key and secret (Don’t forget to change them in your files too!).

So far so good?

Let’s start with the fun…

Create a index.php and open it in your text/php editor of choice. And lets go through the code you need…

<?php

//Declare your key, secret key and callback URL variables (Without these, the api wont work at all)

$clientId = “DROLX3YP0MWNTVYD2CQPAKZWEGPE3NQHAB0FWJQPKTTNW5XC”;
$clientSecret = “OZSAFCGO0VVQJHYHEOS35QPR1W2NFJTZHAPJ0C5MZCCBHIYW”;
$redirectUrl=”http://www.yoursite.com/oAuth_test/callback.php”;

//Include the foursquare-async library:  (Remember, check your paths!)

require_once(‘EpiCurl.php’);
require_once(‘EpiSequence.php’);
require_once(‘EpiFoursquare.php’);

//And some code!
session_start();
try{
$foursquareObj = new EpiFoursquare($clientId, $clientSecret);
$results = $foursquareObj->getAuthorizeUrl($redirectUrl);
echo “<a href=\”$results\”>Click here to make foursquare login</a>”;

} catch (Execption $e) {
//If there is a problem throw an exception
}

?>

So what we did here, after starting the session, is basically creating a new object for the EpiFoursquare class (That’s how we use this library in particular, to read more head to the github project) And send it our clientId and clientSecret vars.
Then we make a call to getAuthorizeUrl; in that class, which requires us to send the path of callback.php, hence the $RedirectUrl.
And finally, we make a quick link that will generate an URL that will lead our user to the Foursquare authorization page.

Foursquare will recognize our link GET variables and ask the user to authorize our application. When the user clicks on the link, he will be redirected to their site and see something like this:

Once your user allows the application, he/she won’t need to do it ever again. But they can also revoke your access at any time through their profile, so be careful not to piss them off.

And lets add some code to the callback.php file…

Otherwise, the user won’t have anywhere to come back to and we won’t know if this worked or not. So make sure to add this callback.php BEFORE you go on and try to click on the link of your index.php.

<?php

//Put in the key and secret for YOUR Foursquare app, callback URL and receive the _GET code.
$clientId = “DROLX3YP0MWNTVYD2CQPAKZWEGPE3NQHAB0FWJQPKTTNW5XC”;
$clientSecret = “OZSAFCGO0VVQJHYHEOS35QPR1W2NFJTZHAPJ0C5MZCCBHIYW”;
$redirectUrl=”http://www.yoursite.com/callback.php”;
$settoken=$_GET['code'];

//Includes the foursquare-async library files
require_once(‘EpiCurl.php’);
require_once(‘EpiSequence.php’);
require_once(‘EpiFoursquare.php’);

//Start session and make some magic…
session_start();
$foursquareObj = new EpiFoursquare($clientId, $clientSecret);
$token = $foursquareObj->getAccessToken($settoken, $redirectUrl);
$foursquareObj->setAccessToken($token["access_token"]);

//You should save the $token in your $_SESSION and in your database for further use, but we don’t need it right now. You will need to setAccessToken($token["access_token"]); the first time you want to make a call in a certain page.

That works enough to make sure we’re connected to the Foursquare API. Congrats! You are now able to make calls to the API!
So lets try that out… add this below the last piece of code in callback.php

try {
//Lets test it making a check in at Mt Rushmore…
$params["venueId"]=”3000225″;  //We get this number from foursquare, its the id for each registered place.
$params["shout"]=”Im really at Mt Rushmore!”;  //And we make a shout, just for fun
$params["broadcast"]=”public”;   //Who can see the post?
$myvar=$foursquareObj->post(‘/checkins/add’,$params);  //We make the call to the foursquareObj and send our params.
} catch (Exception $e) {
echo “Error: “.$e;
}

Upload your files, once again make sure the 5 needed files are uploaded. And open index.php You should see a link that directs you to the authorization site and as soon as you allow it you will be redirected and check in at Mr Rushmore.

Now, you should try a few more API calls to get used to this. For this, you should go through the API documentation and put special attention on how I chose the ‘/checkins/add’  parameter from the API documentation and applied it into our example.

Now, I’ll quote Joe in his nice description of the API’s methods:

As you look through the API documentation you will notice the different methods described like this:

URL: http://api.foursquare.com/v1/venue
Formats: XML, JSON
HTTP Method(s): GET
Requires Authentication: No, but recommended
Parameters:

• vid – the ID for the venue for which you want information

To call the venue details method above in our example we just need to change a couple things.  We know this method takes in the single parameter vid and we can grab a venue’s ID from its Foursquare URL.  22242 in my example corresponds to the venue Town Talk Diner.  On the next line, combine the HTTP method (GET) with the method name from the URL (venue) to form get_venue.

1 2 3 4

//Making a call to the API $params = array("vid"=>22242); $foursquareTest = $foursquareObj->get_venue($params); print_r($foursquareTest->response)

You should think about saving the OAuth information of your users in a database so that they don’t have to authenticate each time, this is done easily if you already use users in your site with a simple call to your database. But extending in that field is not the point of this article.
For now, I hope that you are able to make successful calls to the Foursquare API. To see what else the foursquare-async library has to offer, you should check their wikipage. It’s awesome.

So finally, thanks to joesiwert for his article, which is largely the base of this one. And I hope many of you find this article useful. If you have any comments or questions, or anything remains unclear, please post it below and I’ll be happy to reply as I can.

Happy coding.

~Ryoku W. (w45p)

Microsoft and Google are showing us exactly how childish they are by presenting a beautiful and absolutely laughable act of “He hit me first, mommy”

In this post http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/01/bing-google-fight/  MG Siegler was kind enough to compile the best hits so far! Got to keep a close eye on this enterprises’ Tweets!

Here, I will copy and paste the Tweets MG Siegler selected, they are absolutely HILARIOUS.

AGAIN, the following is TAKEN from MG Siegler’s post, link found above.

@fxshaw
Frank X. Shaw 

1.Don’t be fooled. Google wants to change subject because they’re under investigation in the US and Europe for manipulating search results.

about 6 hours ago via Seesmic DesktopRetweetReply

@fxshaw
Frank X. Shaw 

2. Google collects customer data from Chrome and Android. Pot calling kettle black? http://bit.ly/eLQV70

about 6 hours ago via Seesmic DesktopRetweetReply

@fxshaw
Frank X. Shaw 

3. Harry Shum very clear http://bit.ly/hYvCIM on 1k plus signals used in ranking algorithm…includes clickstream data.

about 6 hours ago via Seesmic DesktopRetweetReply

Google’s Matt Cutts fired back on Twitter:

@mattcutts
Matt Cutts 

So far Bing’s response seems to be “We don’t copy Google’s results. Of course we do.” http://goo.gl/8VoDJ vs. http://goo.gl/yW4Ia

about 3 hours ago via webRetweetReply

Google then decided to escalate things further by using their official blog to very directly call Microsoft out with a post titled: Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results—and denies it. I mean, just think about that for a second.

Then, about an hour ago, there was this great exchange on Twitter in response to Dave Winer posting a link to the original story:

@davewiner
Dave Winer 

Oooops looks like Google caught Microsoft cheating in search. http://r2.ly/853k

about 2 hours ago via webRetweetReply

@fxshaw
Frank X. Shaw 

@davewiner no they didn’t.

about 2 hours ago via Seesmic DesktopRetweetReply

@davewiner
Dave Winer 

@fxshaw The evidence is pretty convincing

about 2 hours ago via webRetweetReply

@fxshaw
Frank X. Shaw 

@davewiner Google had employees log onto ms customer feedback system and send results to Microsoft.

about 2 hours ago via Seesmic DesktopRetweetReply

Bang!

@mattcutts
Matt Cutts 

@fxshaw @davewiner normal people call that “IE8″.

about 2 hours ago via webRetweetReply

Zing!

@fxshaw
Frank X. Shaw 

@mattcutts hey if this whole engineering thing doesn’t work out for you, try PR — you’ve got the chops for it. ;)

about 2 hours ago via Seesmic DesktopRetweetReply

Pow!

@akovacs
Andrew Kovacs 

Re Microsoft’s Bing copying Google search results- What do we want? “We’d like for this practice to stop.” http://goo.gl/f8XiK

about 2 hours ago via webRetweetReply

I already have plans for the next few posts, which will be a little bit more erratic and FAR more frequent.  Along those topics you will find some critique to the 4mat system, if anyone has heard of it already, and some insight to social media and the way it has evolved during the last few years.  No matter how much you want to deny it, facebook is going down! And most of us wonder what is going to be up next!

This is it for now, I hope to see you around soon! Stay tuned.

-R-

So… Some time ago I heard a rumor and just had to check it out, since it just seemed like something too fairytale-ish.
What I found out really surprised me, specially because there was a viral marketing campaign going on about it. Up to today I don’t understand the logic behind this…

What am I talking about? A few months ago, a group of people proposed that the internet should be awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. [link]

Seriously, at first I thought this was some kind of joke. But then, the viral campaign came in, with (very well done) motion graph videos inviting everyone to speak up for why the internet should win said award.

Well, I’m not exactly here to tell you why the internet should have the nobel peace prize…

I’m here to tell you why the internet should NOT win any kind of peace award. And basically, why I think this kind of ideas are the ones that make this world as shitty as it is in terms of VIOLENCE, intolerance and ignorance.

So tell me, what did exactly the internet DO by itself to help the world peace?

Internet is a tool. Not a person, not a thought, not a self-conscious being. The internet doesn’t bring peace, people bring peace, with or without the internet.

Sort of the same that happens with guns. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. If you take out the guns they’ll beat each other to death, guns have nothing to do with it.

Internet is a tool, that can be used for violence and peace. Not a peacemaker and certainly it doesn’t deserve a price for that.

Gandhi didn’t have internet.

Interest Links:
Mashable
BBC
Nobel Peace Prize

Just what we need after Obama’s Nobel prize for not being George W Butch…
Are we really that lame that there is nobody concerned enough for peace that we have to put our hope in a TOOL?

I hope not.

-R-

Everyone wants and needs new ideas. But where do your ideas come from?

I encountered this video by Steven Johnson, with which I completely agree. And of course, I want to share it with all of you.

Ku out.

-R-

Thanks to Marianne Giesemann for pointing me out to the video.

Brenda Brathwaite is a game designer, who at the moment worked as a teacher at SCAD. She is a very experienced and interesting game designer, and her blog “Applied Game Design” is one of the few I’ve continued to read for many years.

I want this post to point everyone to a very interesting post (one of many) from her. “Design Portfolios – Is there such a thing?” holds some of the best advice I’ve heard about building a design portfolio. The tips she talks about are the kind you constantly hear from the most experienced designers and employers, but that are never written down anywhere.

I’d strongly advice to take a look around this post and her blog in general. For more information about B.B. (click here). You can also find her on facebook and twitter, where she also constantly uploads useful and very interesting content.

As a bottom-line, I just want to add that BB is one of the most inspiring designers out there and definitely someone you’d like to know about.

~Bytes!

So, what’s today topic? Well, if you had read the tittle you would now! Duh.
Socialmedia, to many the future of, not only marketing, but human interaction.

First off, I want to share a couple of videos with you, and afterward I’ll just remark a couple of facts shown in the videos.

The first video is about the progression of information technology researched by Karl Fisch, and modified by Scott McLeod; Globalization & The Information Age. It was adapted by Sony BMG at an executive meeting held in Rome in 2008.

And the last video is a re-make of the first one Based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.

Now, some must have seen this videos before. The first video is the original one and the second is one of the MANY re-makes, and I chose it because it’s the one I like the best in a very personal opinion.

So… Let’s highlight some of the facts of the videos, no special remark to which nor to the order of them. I just think it is some data worth paying attention to.

The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004.

The US Department of Labor estimates today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38.

1 out of 8 couples married in the US last year met online.

It is estimated that a week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.

The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years… For students starting a 4 year technical degree this means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.

NTT Japan has successfully tested a fiber optic cable that pushes 14 trillion bits per second down a single strand of fiber. (For which I think. A few years ago, we thought 4 gigabytes where impossible to fill with information in a USB)

Social Media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the Web.

80% of companies use social media for recruitment, 95% of these using LinkedIn.

The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year old females.

What happens in Las Vegas stays in… Facebook, Twitter, RenRen, Kohtakte, Flickr, Youtube…

Wikipedia has over 15 million articles. Studies show it’s as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica.

People care more about how their social graph ranges products and services than how Google ranges them.

78% of consumers trust peer recommendations. While only 14% trust advertisements.

Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI.

90% of people skip ads via TiVo/DVR.

24 of the 25 Largest Newspapers ARE Experiencing Record Declines in Circulation.

The ROI of Social Media is, your business will still exist in 5 years.

So what does it all mean?

There are many ideas that can and will born out of this information. So if you have some spare time, please do share: What’s on your mind?