<?php
error_reporting(-1);
header('Content-type: text/css');
require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/inc/lessc.inc.php');
$less = new lessc($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/css/style.less');

ob_start("compress");

try {
   echo $less->parse();
} catch (exception $ex) {
    exit('lessc fatal error:'.$ex->getMessage());
}   

ob_end_flush();

function compress($buffer) {
   // Reinhold Weber method of compression
   $buffer = preg_replace('!/\*[^*]*\*+([^/][^*]*\*+)*/!', '', $buffer);
   $buffer = str_replace(array("\r\n", "\r", "\n", "\t", '  ', '    ', '    '), '', $buffer);
   return $buffer;
}

?>

I put the LESS variables and mixins in style.less. Not sure if it’s how this is setup or if it’s a limitation of lessphp but putting variables or mixins in any @import doesn’t seem to work.

I’ve been toying around with a few HTML5 apps and one of them might even make it out of the toy stage.

As I’m doing the development on my app I’ve also had to start thinking about the business side of the equation. I’ve come to the conclusion that using the same sales/business model for HTML5 mobile apps as you do for native mobile apps isn’t going to work out as well as it has for native.

The argument about HTML5 over native has pretty well played out for now. We have a number of blog posts on all the pros and cons of each. Of which it’s pretty much broken down into three camps: Native is best and fastest, HTML5 is cross platform and easier to develop, the last camp where I lean, is “what are you trying to do?”. For me though I always err on the side of HTML5 unless what your trying to do is (currently) impossible.

The arguments are always technical in nature and the native camp seldom puts forth their biggest weapon, the app store, as a reason to go native. From my perspective it’s really trumps all technical reasons. The app store has easy-ish app discovery, centralized billing and streamlined installation, a triple threat that HTML5 apps don’t have and therefore keeps them from being easily found and effectively montenized.

There are HTML5 app stores but can you name one? If you can then you’ve been really paying attention to the industry and are not an everyday user. Openappmkt and Zeewe are only one’s that seem moderately successful. I’m sure more are on their way due to HTML5 getting an up surge in mind share. The question is, do they understand what HTML5 apps need or are they trying to cash in on buzz by linking “HTML5″ with “App Store”?

The problem I see in both of the above is that if you look around at the web applications today and you’ll find there is a big difference between them and most native apps, pricing model. Web apps are based on a subscription model and native apps are generally based on a single purchase plus some in-app purchases. Web apps are subscription based because the app data is stored on a server or in the cloud and which needs the monthly flow of money for as long as users use the service. In the long run an HTML5 mobile app with a data backend isn’t going to be able to sustain the overhead by hoping that new purchases will be enough.

To help HTML5 explode on the scene like native apps you need a centralized system(s) for discovery, billing and installation. With centralized billing the end user wont have to deal with a number of monthly charges to his credit card. With an SDK for various languages it should be easy for a developer to build to the model and not have to deal with building his own billing system. For the end user it should be easy to move the dollar your spending a month for access to the NY Times crossword puzzle site to the USA Today Sudoku of the day site.

What also can be offered with a centralized system is the ability for the system owner to offer Heroku style web application hosting for an increased percentage of the take.

During all the talk about RSS being removed from twitter and facebook (now back), I realized that the same code could be retooled for use by others. So after toying around with it a bit and having some random people test it out, like @sarahintampa, it’s finally ready for more people to try.

Here’s a sample of how the output that the code will display in Google Reader.

I was thinking of making it a service but I have no idea how to get past twitter’s api limit of 150 calls per hour from a single ip address. If anyone knows how please let me know and I’ll see what I can do about get this out so you don’t have to host your own.

I put it up as a gist if you want to give it a try.
Twitter API 2 RSS

I have the .htaccess rewrite and code setup to be run from a /twitter directory off your root. There are three modes that it currently handles.
1) /twitter/username – this generates a feed of a named users statuses.
2) /twitter/username/favorites – this generates a feed of a named users favorites.
3) /twitter/username/listname – this generates a feed from a names users twitter list

There are also a few points of configuration.
1) $only_links – set it to 1 if you want only tweets that have links in them.
2) $title2tweet – by default the first link in the tweet gets used as the rss link. set it to 0 to link to the tweet instead.
3) $proxy – some hosts require proxy’s for outbound
4) $tag_case – lets you modify the hashtags as they show up as rss categories.

Couple future enhancements
1) new config to allow you to filter out retweets
2) pass through of additional twitter api querystring options

If you’re interested this is a screenshot of my current RSS Reader pet project. You can see tweets from @elijahmanor

shown in tag mode

I’m not a javascript guru but I managed to hack together something functional. We don’t go live until mid-may so i thought I’d put this out and see if anyone had any comments on the code.

window.Globalizr = (function(window,document,undefined){
   docElement = document.documentElement;
   classes = [];
   lang = '';
   var version = '0.1';
   ret = {};
   var d = document.domain.split('.');
   var l = d.length-1;
   var s = 0;
   classes.push(d[l]);
   var language = window.navigator.userLanguage || window.navigator.language;
   classes.push(language);
   if ('in,id,il,uk,nz,jp,kr,ck'.indexOf(d[l])>0) { s = -1; classes.push(d[l-1]); }
   if ((l+s) > 1) { classes.push(d[d.length-2+s]); }
   if ((l+s) > 1) { classes.push(d[d.length-3+s]); }
      else { classes.push('no-host'); }
   if (document.defaultCharset!=undefined) { classes.push(document.defaultCharset); }
      else { classes.push('no-defaultcharset'); }
   if (document.charset!=undefined) { classes.push(document.charset); }
      else { classes.push('no-charset'); }
   if (document.inputEncoding!=undefined) { classes.push(document.inputEncoding); }
      else { classes.push('no-inputencoding'); }
   docElement.className += classes.join(' ');
   return ret;
})(this,this.document);

Right now I have this code sitting right under the minified Modernizr code.

The goal of this code is to provide a starting point for innovation in feed readers. My hope is to have and support a robust toolkit that will provide a developer with data collection and a set of api’s to interface with the database. I want to work out a module structure in the long run so that options like getting data from postrank or tweetmeme will be possible. I’ve got alot of plans just need to get them into some form of roadmap to help me focus, plus a little feedback wouldn’t hurt.

Here’s a video I made of my RSS Reader front end using the above mentioned code. I’m not releasing the front end yet but soon I hope it will be just one option of many.

My only real issue was about feeds having to be active and pinging hubs. After reading a discussion that hubs could be designed to do a manual fetch of the feed and that it wouldn’t be against protocol. You couldn’t take advantage of the real-time aspects but your not shut out.

So I spent some time looking over the spec but I never learn anything without playing around. So on the last day of my vacation I managed to eek out some time and start playing. First thing was to build an end point and have it email me the request as I manually subscribed to the hub at http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com. Next day I got the end point to respond with the right challenge phrase, and now subscriber pings were flowing.

I sat on that for a bit trying to get a feel for the pings and subscribed to a few more feeds. I think it was at this time I realized the greatest thing about pubsubhubbub, I didn’t have to build a feed engine, just a catchers mitt. Sure for what I had in mind I’d have to slice up the <item> pretty deep, but I don’t have to manage a threading model to efficiently consume feeds. Yippeeee! Awesome.

So now I have an end point that does about 75% of the <item> parsing that I want to do and 7 feeds with two of them being google shared feeds.

You can take a look at a quick little reader I built at http://http://punchingsoup.com/#pubsubhubbub_panel. It’s ugly and doesn’t work quite right but it’s good enough to show.

Userscripts.org

Unfortunately I didn’t have time to build in a way to store search topics in cookies, maybe next version.

I was surprised at the lack of search operators. I expected to be able to search just the title or return only unread posts.

Here’s how to modify the script to add your own search topics.
Open the script up and all you’ll need to modify is this section.

var smarttopics = new Array;
smarttopics = {
"Buzz" : "leak|deadpool|acquisition|rumor|layoff|merger",
"Apple" : "apple|iphone",
"Microsoft" : "microsoft|windows"
};

Say you want to add a topic called Sun and it searches for Sun and Java. Add the following line above the “Apple”… line.

“Sun” : “sun|java”,

Removing a topic is just deleting the line with that topic on it. The biggest thing you’ll need to watch is the comma’s, make sure each line except the last has a comma after it.

It’s still pretty much a toy project and my first in python, but it is being used on http://punchingsoup.com and run every hour.

rss2db.zip

The setup is pretty simple.
1. Run rss2db.sql on your mysql server.
2. Modify the connection information to that mysql server in rss2db.py.
3. Run rss2db.py.

From here i’ll start building out a php based web frontend for the database that mimics what i’ve built in .net for myself.

Should be fun.