mindgraffiti

The choices of web technologies to learn next are overwhelming: should I delve deeper into PHP and mySQL, Ruby on Rails, Python, Flex or ActionScript 3? I continue to learn better CSS techniques and understand XHTML, but where to go from here? Baby steps means learning how to program JavaScript. I can already implement JavaScript frameworks and AJAX pieces developed by others. I can read and understand what any chunk of JavaScript/PHP/ActionScript does, but writing it is another matter.

In terms of accessibility, I think microformats are my next new item to understand. A short term project I would love to test is rebuilding one of the state association member lists as hCards. I wonder if hCards will interact with Google’s Maps API? I would love to aggregate the hCards off of each of our state associations and peg them to a Google map of the U.S. and Canada.

We have so much content available at our fingertips. Why not put it to good use? Membership lists, sale dates, state association events and registration numbers all begging to be mashed up. I would love to take the chance and visualize some of the raw data we add to sites every day.

My long-term goal is to have the same skill set as the Flex developers: understand how to manipulate database calls, be capable of writing in a server-side language, know how to hook into any given API and produce a new product, delivered on a near-universal platform.

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