WebWare

I love good webware. Webware is essentially a service or software (lots of time it's open source) that is web-based.

I like fast, clean, and well written webware. I've been creating and around it for 10 years and can really appreciate when an interface is well done. I like to take some of that love and channel it in inspiration for Globat software.

Right now, my favorites are:
1) Confluence - the best wiki platform I've seen. It's very intuitive and complete.
2) B2Evolution.net - clean, precise and well run project. (I use blogger.com w/Globat for this blog).
3) Mint.com - an unreal web-interface which is polished like no other.
4) Gmail - I am still a huge fan of the gmail interface.

I am currently a big fan of Yahoo's YUI design components and FusionCharts for graphs. I use YSlow on everything, and insist our development team does. Speed and usability are vitally important.

As you're developing web applications, don't just use the same old styles. Look around and find what is cutting edge, fast and intuitive. Your users will love you for it.

--Chris Ueland / President, Globat.com

Quitting!

What a great post title. (a la Seth Godin) :-)

A great lesson I've learned over the years. Quitting is very important and people that become "the best" know not only how to quit, but when to quit. Now, I'm not talking about quitting your job, but rather quitting anything that is going to hold you back from being "the best". There is a long path between starting something and mastery - and it is important to choose carefully. Your mind share will get bogged down and you will never master something if you get distracted by unimportant tasks.

In order to be a super star, you need to quit unimportant things fast and quit often. In the grand scheme of learning and success, they don't matter. For the things that do matter - you have to envision the end in mind and keep moving forward at every cost.

Here's to success and mastery!

--Chris Ueland / President, Globat.com

PHP 4 & 5

As I'm sure many of you have heard, the PHP Project is taking a direction of making PHP5 their exclusively supported language. PHP4 will not be developed any further. Unlike some other hosts, Globat will continue to support PHP4 to ensure that all your scripts work. PHP5 has a tenancy of not being backwards compatible - especially with certain Open Sorce scripts. We will keep running PHP4 as long as it is secure and desired. You can choose which version of PHP you run on a Globat.com account by using a .htaccess file. If you're not running an app that is compatible with PHP5, we invite you to install the latest version.

We do support PHP5 and believe in it as a project. We invite all open source software authors to follow.

Here are the versions all Globat servers are running (as of Jan 31st 2008):

Version 4.4.8 (Jan '08)
http://treasure.globat.com/phpinfo.php

Version 5.2.5 (Nov '07)
http://treasure.globat.com/phpinfo.php5

Enjoy and happy coding.

--Chris Ueland / President, Globat.com