HorneNee Blog

Many of our clients use Wordpress as a platform to organize, display, and update their websites. Integrating photos into a sites content is a frequent request, and Flickr has proven itself to be the easy, no-mess way of doing that. It also allows organizations to harness the power of groups to collect photos of events from individuals based on specific tags.

There seems to be dozens of Wordpress-Flickr plug-ins, each with its own vague description of what it can do for you. Several that we tried do not seem to function properly in the newest version of Wordpress (2.3.3).

Recently, we combed through the options and found what we consider the best plugin for integrating Flickr photos via the Wordpress backend for use in posts. Wordpress-Flickr-Manager features a great interface, is quick to load and compatible up to the most recent version. It allows for searching all photos or browsing by set. The options include choosing from several sizes of images.  Wordpress-Flickr-Manager also includes built in support for lightbox and allows uploading images to flickr from within wordpress.

Horne Nee Inc was invited to beta test Xpenser and Freshbooks integration. This was enough to get us mentioned in a press release. I’ll be watching for more interesting freshbooks mashups and other services that will streamline our operations.

Yesterday while reading techcrunch, I read about crossloop, an application that lets you access PCs remotely. I’ve used a variety of products in the genre before and routinely use VNC. However, for helping a customer remotely without requiring any prior setup or firewall configuration, Crossloop is great. Its easy for a non-technical client to install and within seconds you can be walking them through a web-based admin panel, or in our case setting up a network printer in San Francisco from Minneapolis (yes, Horne Nee Inc does hardware support for some of our clients).

I’ll be using crossloop for many things from now on. Instead of writing lengthy how-to emails, it will likely be easier to show a client via crossloop how to post on wordpress or send a letter via phplist. Currently it only runs on PCs, hopefully they will release a Mac version at some point.

On the advice of Associate Preston Theler, we’ve chosen to use the name HN Ventures for our clients with less mature senses of humor.  According to PT, HNV “sounds like the type of company that does something crazy”.  Sounds about right to us.

Facebook launched a new advertising platform that could change the face of online advertising. They now provide a slick interface for businesses, products and public figures to promote themselves without wedging themselves into a profile meant for an individual. I tried my hand at creating a “product” page for the HorneNee Inc Brand. You too can be a fan of HorneNee if you’d like. Along with HorneNee Inc, I added TechCrunch, Google Maps and the New York Times to my “I’m a fan of” section on my profile.

Facebook can be a pretty effective way to promote a business and I could see creating product pages, applications and Facebook ad campaigns for some of our clients.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=5860023902

If you’re sweet like we are and hacked your iPhone before the new firmware came out, here’s how to update.

1. First thing you need to do is “re-virginize” your phone. Basically, this means tricking itunes into thinking that you never broke it in the first place. Assuming you know how to ssh to your phone (putty is probably the best program), go here:

http://code.google.com/p/iphone-elite/wiki/RevirginizingTool

I got hung up on one step. When I tried to backup my seczone (this will make sense if you go through the steps), the procedure kept hanging here:

# ./norz seczone.backup 0×3FA000 0×2000
. . .
Dumping: A03FA000-A03FC000
Waiting for data…

If this happens, hit Ctrl-C to cancel the process, they type “chmod 766 ./seczone.backup” and repeat the earlier step.

2. Once you’ve done that, it’s much easier than before. Go here: http://iphone.unlock.no/ . If you’re using AT&T this should be all you need, but if for some reason you’ve switched carriers (not that I endorse doing this, wink, wink), read below first.

This is the tricky part that caused me to almost have a heartattack. Everything is done using safari on your iphone. It exploits some kind of vulnerability having to do with TIFF files. The problem is that if you have Installer already on your phone (which you do), the old version doesn’t know how to exploit this and you won’t be able to install a new version. So what you have to do is BEFORE you do step 2, restore your iphone to factory condition with the old firmware using iTunes (there’s a button).

What’s tricky is that if you are using TMobile or some other carrier, if you install 1.1.1 first you can’t access iTunes to restore it (unless you’re elite like me). So don’t make this mistake.

While we haven’t found a single web application that completely replaces quickbooks, we use freshbooks.com for billing and xpenser.com to track our expenses.  Xpenser provides an extremely simple and streamlined interface that works via email, SMS, IM or voice (using jott.com).  We’re still learning about all its awesome features, and hope to use it a lot to record small expenses while we’re off on a crazy project.  More on this later.

One of the many web applications we use at Horne Nee Inc is freshbooks. Its a great web application for tracking time, creating invoices and managing those invoices. They can even print and mail invoices on our behalf. Using freshbooks, we’ve got a lot more time to work on client projects and spend less time dealing with billing.

Recently, the Ontario based freshbooks team was in San Francisco for a conference and called Preston to invite us to dinner. They took us to Espetus, a great Brazilian restaurant near our office. We talked a bit about freshbooks but also about tech issues and more. We ended by taking them for a round of beers at Zeitgeist, which according to Sunir, is their new favorite bar in San Francisco.

If you have a web app and are coming to San Francisco and would like to take us out to dinner, don’t hesitate to contact us.

We founded Horne Nee Inc (a California Corporation) this summer and slowly transitioned our various consulting projects to the new company. Horne Nee Inc now handles the web development, transportation planning and photography projects for both Brendan and Jed.

We’ve been so busy working on websites for clients that its taken a while to develop our own. Prior to starting Horne Nee Inc, Brendan operated under the names Nee Consulting and Brilliant Design. Both of these domain names now point to our new company, Horne Nee Inc. Picturethecity.com, Brendan’s photo site is still a separate site.

We’re still not settled on the logo, but the current one will do for now.