This is my very first blog post on the iPad. Let’s see how is it going to be.

My biggest dilemma about the iPad was getting a wifi only model or waiting for the 3G one. It is obvious that I couldn’t wait for the 3G model. That’s mostly because of AT&T. If you are an iPhone user, you will understand me.

Let alone the 3G performance, talking on the phone is like being in the hell with AT&T.

If I am not wrong, Apple said there will be no tethering for the iPad. So If you want the Internet on the streets you will need the 3G model right. No.

Get the wifi model. If you have an iPhone, just jailbreak it without thinking. I already did because I wanted to use a fee custom themes & icons. If you need any help with jail breaking your iPhone, check out this tutorial or google it. I promise if you do it with blackra1n, it will be painless and super easy. - You may need 3.1.2 Firmware though.

After jail breaking use Rock or Cydia to find MyWi app to create a wifi network on your iPhone. Yes MyWi is a very simple app that tethers your 3G connection via wifi, USB or Bluetooth.

And that’s it. It takes nearly 5 minutes to complete all these steps and go online with your iPad without waiting and most importantly paying any penny to AT&T.

Yes, I hear you. I am still using AT&T’s crappy network.

That’s why I am going to suggest another way to get internet on your iPad. It is called Sprint. As you might know Sprint is screaming their 4G network everywhere. And they do have a great device for 3G & 4G.

It is called Overdrive (caution: flash) and it is almost half size of the iPhone. It basically creates a wifi network when it is activated and 5 devices can connect it. Even your iPhone. I used one while we were road tripping to New Mexico from San Francisco. I must admit I was pretty happy with it. Even in some “middle of nowhere” places I was able to get connected. And it’s much faster than AT&T’s San Francisco 3G (I was using Sprint 3G).

I am seriously considering signing a 4G Sprint contract.

Back to iPad

Finally, writing long texts on the iPad… There is no difference between writing on my mac book pro or the iPad. Not at all. The only bad thing is WordPress iPad app has no ability to copy/paste & add HTML codes.

I’m assuming you are viewing this page with a brand new Firefox or Safari (webkit) browser. Otherwise, you won’t be able to see the effect (OK here is a screenshot).

For those who want to use this effect, I’d recommend you to play with this code a little bit. Because it’s a little bit of mess. You’ll need to change the width to your image’s, maybe a few more tweaks.

<style type="text/css">
#shadow1 {
	margin: 40px auto;
	width: 500px;
}
#shadow1 div, #shadow1 div div {
	-webkit-box-shadow: 0 5px 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5);
	-moz-box-shadow: 0 5px 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5);
	box-shadow: 0 5px 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5);
	width: 480px;
	height: 303px;
	background: #fff;
}
#shadow1 div {
	-webkit-transform: rotate(2deg);
	-moz-transform: rotate(2deg);
	transform: rotate(2deg);
}
#shadow1 div div {
	-webkit-transform: rotate(-4deg);
	-moz-transform: rotate(-4deg);
	transform: rotate(-4deg);
}
#shadow1 div div img {
	-webkit-transform: rotate(2deg);
	-moz-transform: rotate(2deg);
	transform: rotate(2deg);
	margin: -30px 0 0 -10px;
	border: 4px solid #fff;
}
</style>

<div id="shadow1">
	<div>
		<div>
			<img src="Your Image Here" alt="Coolio" />
		</div>
	</div>
</div>

The code basically applies box-shadows to the two divs which are already rotated a few degrees to the opposite directions. Finally the main image is being rotated back to zero degrees.

If someone would like to improve the code & make it a little bit modular, I’d love to give him/her credit here.

These kind of domains are called unicode domain names. They are basically unicode characters & when you hit the enter, they transform into puny codes. That’s it, nothing complicated.

So how do you buy a URL like this? Dear samsoff.es wrote a pretty long article about this. And here I’m giving you the short version:

• Find your unicode character from http://www.technology.heartland.edu/…/unicode.html
• Encode your character to puny code from http://idnaconv.phlymail.de
• Get your puny code (something like xn—rya) & go to GoDaddy Internationalized Domain Name Page. Yup, not every domain company will let you buy these domains.
• Write your code, select any country from the list… You know the rest.

P.s. My unicode character is working great on many systems, but not on some Windows versions. Since this is not something new, most of the unicode characters are already bought by others (one letter ones).

For those who cannot see my domain name:

Scary huh? Not really.

I stopped using my desktop last year and I must say, that’s one of the good things I’m proud of. Why?

• I’m no longer worried about organizing my desktop. So I do not spend time on it.
• All my files are organized in their folders, not in some where they don’t belong.
• I use the desktop like a trash. Most of it are screenshots, the rest are just temporary files that I don’t need.
• Instead of desktop shortcuts I use Spotlight in Mac. It’s faster than going back to desktop & finding stuff. I believe there are applications like this for Windows.
• I delete all the files on the desktop once a month without thinking.

Maybe you don’t need a desktop too?

For other inspirations like this follow MinimalMac.

Finally the most important question of all time: Do we really need desktops?

You don’t need to know what exactly typography is. But you have to know some simple rules to make your writings more readable.

First of all, there is a flow in every written content. A title, -maybe- a summary, paragraphs, sub-titles, paragraphs again and -maybe- foot-notes. That flow makes readers easily follow your article.

• Title summarizes your article,
• Sub-titles make readers understand what paragraphs related with,
• Paragraphs make readers follow lines easily. 

And then, there are some simple formats like bold, italic, underline, and lists.

Most people think typography is about fonts.
Most designers think typography is about fonts.
Typography is more than that,
it’s expressing language through type.
Placement, composition, typechoice.
- Mark Boulton

• Bold words means something important; emphasis,
• Italics are used for show something that less important than bold ones, some in sentence titles, introductions or defining terms and sometimes in-line quotes,
• In the old days, underline was used to emphasise text but in the Internet age, underlined texts mean that words are clickable. So do not use underline style unless you are linking a text,
• And of course lists for lists.

Here are some tips for non-technical you

• No matter what you are using (WordPress, Blogger, Drupal) you are using a template. And your template’s designer has to be designed all styles for you. You don’t have to create your own. So do not realign your texts, change text colors or reinvent new font sizes.
• Try to use your CMS’s WYSIWYG editor simply. But not all of its features. Just use B, I, Lists, Format (paragraph, headings, etc.).
• Use each feature correctly.
• Try not to write long paragraphs. Cut your paragraphs after 3-4 sentences.
• A paragraph means enough spaces between two different group of sentences. A line break is totally different than paragraph. Using line breaks as paragraphs will makes it harder for them to concentrate on text.
• If you are writing a long article, remember to define its parts by sub titles. Use Heading 2 & below for your sub titles.
• Never use CAPS for emphasis, use bold instead.

These are some simple rules to prevent mistakes like I see all the time on some non-technical blogs. And I hope that this article will help you & others.

Let’s go on searching the net step. You’ll go to Google, google it and find tons of companies, that’s for sure. Think that’s your scenario:

• You clicked on of them,
• Watched “brilliant” intro,
• Wowed by their ultra big logo,
• Lots of animations made you feel like you were in a carnival,
• Widgets made for their international customers made you think how thoughtful they are about their customers. Oh they also have the latest news section!
• Oh that site should be your home page, how cool is that!

Right? No. Most of these sites will steal your time with their ugly, non-organized structure & communication-less design. There are lots of information about everything except their job: cleaning.

right design + right content = result

If you have a web site that you market your company / service, here is a checklist for you:

• Know what you are doing and what you are trying to sell,
• Make a list of what your customers need, that’ll probably be your site map’s basics.
• Compare your list with your web site, if you have already checked your list. Does your web site have other elements besides what you need?
• Basic elements of a corporate site home page:
  • Logo
  • Menu (less than 6 items)
  • Headline (what do you do?)
  • Spots (briefs for important parts of your web site: services, products, more info, contact)
  • Footer (summarize your menu items, give your contact info again, put a link to go top/home)
• It’s not important to design fancy pages, it is all about clean presentation.
• If you want a feature that is not related with any of your services, just don’t do it.

When you give your users what they want, you will get good results.

One of the things that I’m working on nowadays is YSlow!’s performance optimization rules. If you don’t have any idea on what YSlow! is: it’s a Firefox Firebug add-on. YSlow! checks your web pages and tells you why they are slow based on the Yahoo!’s rules of high performance web sites article. It simply gives a grade to your web page.

Mine was 64 (Grade: D) when I first installed WordPress and implemented my design. At that point I didn’t do anything about performance optimization. So, my score was expectable.

Now, it’s 86 (Grade: B). I know, it’s not the best but it means a 35% increase. It could be better if I use Content Delivery Network (the only rule that gives me an F). Maybe in the future. Here is a list about my optimization:

• Erenemre.com uses YUI grids and base CSS files. They are linked to YUI’s original locations, Yahoo! servers. This is kind of a CDN method and also since most of YUI users use YUI with this method; YUI may be cached in visitors’ browsers.
• I use CSS sprites method. This is a method to decrease HTTP requests by using all similar images in one master image file.
• I installed GZippy WordPress plugin. GZippy re-enables Gzip compression under WordPress. I also installed Wp Super Cache plugin but it didn’t change anything.
• There are some WordPress plugins for Gzipping CSS file called WP CSS and CSS Compress, but they didn’t help at all.
• .htaccess hacks didn’t help me to Gzip my CSS file. So I did it manually. Simply I created a PHP file and wrote a few lines of PHP Header code and then put my CSS codes in it. I edited my templates header.php file and changed CSS file to this PHP file.
• I applied some Apache caching (Expires) rules to my .htaccess file by using the codes on this page. That increased my “add an Expires header” score from E to A.
• Also my ETags score was F. So I added these codes to my .htaccess file. It’s now a B. Why not A? Because, there is a JavaScript file for my web statistics and I cannot modify it.

These are some ways I used to increase my score. In theory, they work. But if you are using other platforms or have other kinds of low scores I strongly suggest you to read this sweet article.