I’m really excited to announce our very first Think Vitamin Online Conference!

Please join us and Andy Clarke, Ethan Marcotte, Matthew Smith, and Jina Bolton for the CSS3 Online Conference.

Speakers

• Ethan Marcotte (Happy Cog, @beep and Unstoppable Robot Ninja)
• Matthew Smith (SquaredEye and @SquaredEye)
• Andy Clarke (Stuff and Nonsense and @malarkey)
• Jina Bolton (Sushi and Robots)

What You’ll Learn

1. CSS3 Animations: Transforms and Transitions
   Learn how to translate, scale and rotate DOM elements, transition smoothly between CSS properties and animate elements utilising key frames.
2. Typography in CSS3: @font-face, font embedding, licensing fonts and columns
   Utilising the @font-face construct for font embedding along with practical solutions were licensed fonts are concerned. Also covering the splitting of a single element’s content into multiple columns.
3. CSS3 Best Practice: Graceful Degradation, browser-specific prefixes and more
   How best to implement CSS3 right now, the considerations relating to browser support and the use of vendor-specific properties.
4. Visual effects with CSS3: RGBa, box-shadow, box-sizing, border-radius, border-image and multiple background images
   Understand how to effectively use CSS3 properties to create compelling site designs faster and more efficiently than before.

Buy your ticket here.

Why Attend?

1. Learn how you can use the new features of CSS3
2. Re-watch the presentations after the conference as many times as you like
3. Ask the speakers your questions – live!
4. No travel costs
5. No time out of the office
6. Simply login with your browser

When

• San Francisco: 9am – 1:30pm
• London: 5pm – 9:30pm
• Sydney: 4am – 8:30am (Tuesday March 23)

Hope you can make it!

We know a ton of you would like to attend Future of Web Apps, Future of Web Design or Stack Overflow Dev Days but you live too far away or it’s too expensive.

To help you out, we’re going to run an online conference for you. It’s going to be $150 for a five-hour in-depth conference, taught by the web’s most talented designers and developers.

Highlights …

• You can ask the speakers your questions
• No travel costs
• No time out of the office
• Simply login with your browser
• You can re-watch the presentations after the conference
  as many times as you like

What Topics Do YOU Want?

To decide the topic of the 1st conference, we’re going to conduct a poll. Whatever topic gets the most votes wins.

We’d love to hear from you! Thanks :)

If you’d like to be notified when tickets go on sale (there will be a limited amount of 10% off early-bird tickets) please sign up to the Think Vitamin Newsletter (at the bottom of this page). Thanks again!

If you can’t see the form below, please fill it out here.

You might’ve heard the news that Twitter Lists are alive and kicking. If you don’t know what they are, here’s a brief explanation:

Any Twitter user can create a list of people on Twitter, which can be followed with one click. For example, all the people on the Carsonified Team can be found at twitter.com/carsonified/team.

We’re with Robert Scoble on this one: We LOVE this idea (see his great write-up here). It’s going to make Twitter even more valuable because you’ll be able to easily find and follow the type of people you’re interested in.

Here are five Twitter Lists we think you’ll find useful:

1. Top Web Developers
2. Most Influential in Tech
3. Top Web Designers
4. Tech News
5. Carsonified’s Recommended

If you know of any really great lists, please add them to the comments!

I’m SUPER excited to announce the launch of FOWA Miami 2010. We’ve worked extremely hard on bringing you the best speakers in the industry while also focusing on essential topics that will help your web app succeed.

Companies Speaking:

• Twitter
• Reddit
• Mint.com
• jQuery
• Palm Pre
• FreshBooks
• Opera
• PayPal

Speakers:

• Alex Payne (Platform Lead of Twitter)
• Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures)
• John Resig (Creator of jQuery)
• Steve Huffman (Founder of Reddit)
• Mike McDerment (FreshBooks)
• Tara Hunt (Author of The Whuffie Factor)
• Dion Almaer (Head of Palm Developer Community)
• Aaron Patzer (CEO and Founder of Mint.com)
• Molly Holzschlag (Opera)
• Alex Hunter (Launched Virgin.com)

Workshops:

1. Building a Web App A-Z
2. Converting Free Users to Paid Customers
3. How to build Facebook Connect + openID into Your App
4. How to use A/B Testing, Analytics and Goal Measurement in your Web App
5. How to use HTML 5 to Enhance Your Web App
6. Q/A with Fred Wilson
7. Kick ass Marketing Techniques
8. How to use jQuery to Improve Your Web App

Conference Sessions:

1. The 10 Golden Principles for Successful Web Apps
2. Speedy, Stable, and Secure: Better Web Applications Through Functional Languages
3. Your Social Media Strategy Won’t Save You
4. Advanced JavaScript to Improve Your Web App
5. Kick Ass Marketing Techniques
6. What You Need to be Measuring and How to Do It
7. Marketing Metrics and the Systems You Need to Measure Them
8. Open Source Libraries to Fuel Your App
9. How HTML 5 is Going to Completely Change your Web App
10. How to Take Your Start-up to the Next Level

Dates:

Feb 22 – 24, 2010

• Day 1: Beach Party, BBQ, Drinks and Free Workshops
• Day 2: Conference
• Day 3: Workshops

Save 47%

There’s only 20 Super Early Bird tickets at 47% off, so be quick (only 440 seats total, so the show will definitely sell out early).

Hope you can make it! :)

We’re here at the FOWA workshops in London and I thought I’d jot something on a random whiteboard in the venue. I initially wrote: “I love @fowa” but as soon as I wrote it, I knew it was totally backwards. Instead of trying to pump up our brand, it hit me that the whole reason we’re here is to serve our lovely customers.

It’s not about us. It’s about them.

So I changed it to “#FOWA loves you. Thanks for coming!”. We love our audience and we’re grateful they took time out of their busy schedule to be here. We should be thankful they’re here, not the other way around.

I think that’s something we should all keep in mind when it comes to our businesses and customers. It’s not about us. It’s all about them. Focus on absolutely loving your customers and your business will flourish.

As you all probably know, we also run a conference called The Future of Web Apps. Just wanted to give you a quick heads up that the event in London next week is about to sell out. There’s only about 45 seats left.

You can check out the topics, speakers and ticket prices here.

The tickets will probably be gone by Friday, and it’s the best show we’ve ever done.

You’ll Learn …

• How to Build a Web App from A-Z
• How to Take Your Users from One to a Million
• How to Improve your Web App with HTML 5
• Unleashing Full Object-Oriented Capability
• The Future of Agile: Merb + Ruby on Rails
• How to Build with Facebook Connect and add Social Context to Your Website
• Copywriting Fundamentals for the Web
• Kick-Ass Online Marketing Techniques
• How to Manage the Growth of your Web App
• How to Increase the Accessibility of Your Web App

Awesome Speakers …

• Twitter
• PayPal
• Facebook
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Kevin Rose
• FreshBooks
• Six Apart
• And more …

First Live Appearance by Gary Vaynerchuk

We are also delighted to be hosting Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary TV. He will be in town for his first ever UK appearance and will be riffing on why it’s time you all start “Crushing It” as well as giving advice on why now is the time to turn your ideas into a business. He’s one of the most inspiring speakers we’ve ever seen and you shouldn’t miss him.

The Kevin and Gary Show

The conference will end with “The Kevin and Gary Show”, a one time only show for FOWA attendees. Kevin Rose and Gary Vaynerchuk will bring their take on the web, marketing, wine, beer and who knows what else in this one off live event from the FOWA stage. Who knows, they might even invite you to join them on the sofa and share in the fun.

Huge Party Hosted by PayPal

We’re going to have a rocking huge party on the first night and it’s one you don’t want to miss. There’s going to be free alcohol, great music and tons of fun to be had.

Hope you can join us! Feel free to checkout the topics, speakers and ticket prices here.

I just got back from a two week holiday in France and I purposely chose to leave my iPhone and laptop behind. The primary reason was that I didn’t want to get sucked into work, but the secondary reason was that I wanted to have space to think.

The trouble with our always-on lifestyles is that you can’t go anywhere or do anything without being interrupted (it’s even harder if you have kids). The problem with being constantly interrupted is that it keeps you from thinking deeply.

Why is thinking deeply important? Simple really: life is insanely short and you might be wasting time doing stuff that has absolutely no value to you. The problem is that when you’re busy, it’s easy to overlook.

If you can’t afford to take a two week holiday right now, then here’s what I’d suggest: Wake up two hours early or stay up two hours later for just one day. Don’t turn on your computer or go near your phone. Simply grab a notebook and a pencil. Then here’s the important part: just let yourself be quiet and think.

I’d suggest drawing a timeline from 1 to 100 and plot your current age. Then plot milestones on the timeline like when you’ll be 40, 60, 80 and ‘Kids go to college’, etc. Then even put ‘Death’ on there. Morbid? Not really. It’s just the truth – none of us will last forever. And that makes what you’re doing with your life right now even more important.

I stumbled across a really interesting example of company transparency yesterday. Shirt.Woot sells a different shirt every day and they release all the live data about where their sales are happening.

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This is a radical approach because most companies would be afraid their competitors would use this data against them. However, Woot is smart enough to realize that this is a powerful tool for drawing potential customers in and encouraging activity. It’s really interesting to know how you compare with other folks who bought the same shirt.

Interesting, transparent, quirky data, FTW.

After four tiring-exciting-stressful-fun days, we’d like to introduce you to our new little buddy, HelloApp.

The idea is simple: When you arrive at a conference, you just say where you’re sitting, via Twitter. Once you do that, you can …

1. Search for people with a certain skill-set (ie PHP, jQuery, CSS3, marketing, etc) and see where they’re sitting
2. View the seating diagram colored based on Twitter follower count
3. Search for a specific person in the audience and find out where they’re sitting
4. View the seating diagram colored based on whether people are Designers, Developers or Businessmen
5. Earn badges and points by meeting people and completing tasks. If you earn a high enough rank, you’ll be able to post public messages to the entire audience and win prizes.

Here’s how it works …

Check-in

The first thing you do is check-in to the conference. You can do this by tweeting:

@helloapp !dev #php #html5 #jquery

That says that you’re a Developer who is tagging themselves with PHP, HTML 5 and jQuery.

You can also check-in via the web app …

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Earn Badges and Points

You can earn points by meeting people and completing special tasks. Once you build up enough points you earn the right to post messages to the entire audience and win special prizes. Here’s how it works …

When you meet someone and they give you their Twitter username, just tweet:

@helloapp met @their-username

If they return the favor and tweet:

@helloapp met @your-username

You’ll then both get points for meeting each other. Both people have to do it, in order for the points to be awarded. Here’s how badges look on your profile …

Grab Your Seat

Once you check-in, you say which seat your sitting in by using the passcode attached to your physical seat at the conference. This is done via Twitter like this:

@helloapp sat your-seat-passcode

Once you’ve done that, you appear in the seating chart like this …

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Explore the Crowd

You can then browse the seating chart, click on the tag cloud or search. You’ll be able to see who is sitting around you, what their interests are, and whether you have anything in common.

In the screenshot below, we’ve searched for anyone who’s tagged themselves with ‘PHP’.

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In the screenshot below, we’re viewing the audience based on number of Twitter followers …

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In the screenshot below, we’re viewing the audience based on whether they’re a Designer, Developer or Businessman …

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What You Can do Right Now

Obviously HelloApp is designed to be used during a conference, so you can’t use that functionality right now. However, what you can do is Join In and tag yourself and say whether you’re a Designer, Developer or Businessman. You can also search the list of everyone who joins before the conference.

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A Big Thanks To …

• Mark and Mark at Microsoft for being so supportive of The Future of Web Apps
• Red Gate for their .NET developer tools
• Matt Lee from Red Gate for coding like a madman
• Mike for the beautiful design work
• Keir and Will for all the support

It was a great experience coding it in ASP.NET MVC and we’re looking forward to possibly doing more apps in the framework.

Please Join In and let us know what you think!

If you’ve ever gotten your blog post overwritten by another author, you know how annoying it can be. Thankfully WordPress 2.6+ has a handy little feature called Revisions.

Here’s how it works …

Edit the post you’d like to restore to a previous version and scroll down to ‘Post Revisions’. Click on any of the past revisions (it doesn’t matter which one) …

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and choose the two versions you’d like to compare and click the ‘Compare Revisions’ button …

View the differences between the two revisions …

Scroll down the page and click ‘Restore’ on the correct version. Bam, you’re good to go.

There is also a handy plugin to further control WordPress Revisions which allows you to set how many revisions are stored.