“Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.

Your ‘frog’ is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment.

The first rule of frog eating is this:

“If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first”

The second rule of frog eating is this:

“If you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn’t pay to sit and look for very long.”

21 Great ways to stop procrastinating and get more done in less time

1.    Set the table: Decided exactly what you want. Clarity is essential.  Write out your goals and objectives before you begin.

  2. Plan every day in advance: Think on paper. Every minute you spend in planning can save you 5 or 10 minutes in execution. Take some time to plan your day tomorrow. Use your blackberry or day planner if necessary.

Begin today to plan every day, week, and month in advance.  Start by making a list of everything you have to do within the next 24 hours.  Add to your list as new things come up.  Make a list of all your projects.  Take special note of the big multitask jobs that are important to your future. 

Lay out each of your major goals, projects, or tasks by priority, what is most important; and by sequence, what has to be done first, second, and so forth. 

Always work from a list.  You’ll be amazed at how much more productive you become and how much easier it is to eat your frog. 

2.    Apply the 80/20 Rule to everything: Twenty percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results. Always concentrate your efforts on that top 20 percent.

   4.  Consider the Consequences: Your most important tasks and priorities are those that can have the most serious consequences, positive or negative, on your life or work. Focus on these above all else.

   5.  Practice creative procrastination: Since you can’t do everything, you must learn to deliberately put off those tasks that are of low value so that you have enough time to do the few things that really count.

   6.  Use the ABCDE Method continually: Before you begin work on a list of tasks, take a few minutes to organize them by value and priority, so you can be sure of working on your most important activities.

   7.  Focus on key result areas: Identify and determine those results that you absolutely, positively have to get to do your job well, and work on them all day long.

   8.  The Law of Three: Identify the three things you do in your work that account for 90% of your contribution, and focus on getting them done before anything else. You will then have more time for your family and personal life.

   9.  Prepare thoroughly before you begin: Have everything you need at hand before you start. Assemble all the papers, information, tools, work materials, and numbers you might require so that you can get started and keep going.

  10.  Take it one oil barrel at a time: You can accomplish the biggest and most complicated job if you just complete it one step at a time.

  11.  Upgrade your key skills: The more knowledgeable and skilled you become at your key tasks, the faster you start them, and the sooner you get them done.

12.  Leverage your special talents: Determine exactly what it is that you are very good at doing, or could be very good at, and throw your whole heart into doing those specific things very, very well.

13.  Identify your key constraints: Determine the bottlenecks or chokepoints, internal or external that set the speed at which you achieve your most important goals, and focus on alleviating them.

14.  Put the pressure on yourself: Raise the bar for yourself, and be your own motivator to reach it.  Imagine that you have to leave town for a month and work as if you had to get all your major tasks completed before you left.

15.  Maximize your personal power: Identify your periods of highest mental and physical energy each day, and structure your most important and demanding tasks around these times. Get lots of rest so you can perform at your best.

16.  Motivate yourself into action: Be your own cheerleader. Look for the good in every situation. Focus on the solution rather than the problem. Always be optimistic and constructive.

17.  Get out of the technological time sinks: Use technology to improve the quality of your communications, but do not allow yourself to become a slave to it. Learn to occasionally turn things off and leave them off.

18.  Slice and dice the task: Break large, complex task down into bite-sized pieces, and then do just one small part of the task to get started.

19.  Create large chunks of time: Organize your days around large blocks of time where you can concentrate for extended periods on your most important tasks.

20.  Develop a sense of urgency: Make a habit of moving fast on your key tasks. Become known as a person that does things quickly and well.

21.  Single handle every task: Set clear priorities, start immediately on your most important task and then work without stopping, until the job is 100 percent complete. This is the real key to high performance and maximum personal productivity.

Make a decision to practice these principles every day until they become second nature to you. With these habits of personal management as a permanent part of your personality, your future success will be unlimited.

Just do it! Eat That Frog!

 Microsoft released WebMatrix, a free Web development tool designed to give students and beginners an easy introduction to Web development. It has been in beta since July.

WebMatrix is designed as a one-stop-shop for simple Web development needs, supporting both PHP and ASP.NET development. It includes support for a wealth of open source Web frameworks (including Drupal, Joomla and WordPress), a local Web server and database for development and testing, and easy deployment to third-party hosts. It also includes a number of "Web Helpers": components providing easy integration with, for example, Twitter and PayPal. A total of some 40 open source projects are installable, customizable, and deployable through WebMatrix.

The goal of WebMatrix is to make it easy for people to get up and running with any of these frameworks; to take out the Web server configuration, database creation, and so on. They do this while still providing full access to the software if you should want it, so that extensive customizations and modifications are still possible—something that might not be the case with a traditional hosted implementation of a CMS or blog platform.

With WebMatrix's simple front-end and extensive support for open source projects, Microsoft is hoping that the product will appeal to a wide cross-section of developers. It should offer a gentle introduction to development and customization to beginners and students, and time-saving and convenience to more experienced developers. For those who outgrow WebMatrix, migrating to one of the free or paid versions of Visual Studio is also an option, providing a natural progression as needs become more complex.

As well as providing access to these existing ASP.NET and PHP open source frameworks, WebMatrix ships with ASP.NET Razor, a new streamlined templating language for ASP.NET development. This is likely to appeal to ASP.NET developers even as they move beyond WebMatrix, as it's a much cleaner, tidier syntax than the mix of markup used in "traditional" ASP.NET.

WebMatrix seems to be a neat tool, especially for hobbyists and others who want to publish a blog but want to go further with their customizations than is typical. What is harder to see is how much usage it will garner outside this niche; professionals are likely to outgrow it rapidly.

PHP is probably the most popular web development language right now. At least 20 million domains use PHP and it’s the language used on major sites such as Wikipedia and Facebook as well as in some of the world’s biggest open source projects like WordPress and Drupal.

In this article, I’ll share with you ten things I wish I was told when I was just getting started with PHP development, and I’m hoping you’ll be able to learn a thing or two if you’re just taking your first steps into this awesome web development language.

1. Use PHP Core Functions and Classes

If you’re trying to do something that seems fairly common, chances are, there’s already a PHP function or class that you can take advantage of. Always check out thePHP manual before creating your own functions. There’s no need to create a function to remove the white space at the beginning and at the end of a string when you can just use the trim() function. Why build an XML parser for RSS feeds when you can take advantage of PHP’s XML Parser functions (such as xml_parse_into_struct)?

2. Create a Configuration File

Instead of having your database connection settings scattered everywhere, why not just create one master file that contains its settings, and then include it in your PHP scripts? If you need to change details later on, you can do it in one file instead of several files. This is also very useful when you need to use other constants and functions throughout multiple scripts.

Using a config file is a popular web application pattern that makes your code more modular and easier to maintain.

3. Always Sanitize Data That Will Go into Your Database

SQL injections are more common that you may think, and unless you want a big headache later on, sanitizing your database inputs is the only way to get rid of the problem. The first thing you should do is learn about popular ways your app can be compromised and get a good understanding of what SQL injections are; read about examples of SQL injection attacks and check out this SQL injection cheat sheet.

Luckily, there’s a PHP function that can help make a big heap of the problem go away:mysql_real_escape_string. mysql_real_escape_string will take a regular string (learn about data types through this PHP variables guide) and sanitize it for you. If you use the function together with htmlspecialchars, which converts reserved HTML characters (like <script> becomes <script>), not only will your database be protected, but you’ll also safeguard your app against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks when rendering user-submitted HTML (such as those posted in comments or forum threads).

4. Leave Error Reporting Turned On in Development Stage

Looking at the PHP White Screen of Death is never helpful except for knowing something is definitely wrong. When building your application, leave error_reportingand display_errors turned on to see run-time errors that will help you quickly identify where errors are coming from.

You can set up these run-time configurations in your server’s php.ini file or, if you don’t have access to override the directives in this file, set them on top of your PHP scripts (using the ini_set() function to set display_errors to 1, but it has its limitations when done this way).

The reason behind turning on error reporting is quite simple — the sooner you know about your errors, the faster you can fix them. You might not care about the warning messages that PHP might give you, but even those usually signal towards a memory-related issue that you can take care of. When you’re done building out your application, turn error_reporting and display_errors off or set their values to a production-ready level.

5. Don’t Over-Comment Your Code

Proper documentation of your code through comments in your scripts is definitely a good practice, but is it really necessary to comment every single line? Probably not. Comment the complicated parts of your source code so that when you revisit it later you’ll quickly remember what’s going, but don’t comment simple things such as your MySQL connection code. Good code is self-explanatory most of the time.

Good Example of Commenting

<?php/* CONNECT TO THE DATABASE */$hostname = "localhost";$username = "";$password = "";$dbname = "";$connectionStatus = mysql_connect($hostname, $username, $password) or die(mysql_error());$selectionStatus = mysql_select_db($dbname) or die(mysql_error());/* END DATABASE CONNECTION */?>

Bad Example of Commenting

<?php/* DEFINE THE CONNECTION VARIABLES */$hostname = "localhost"; // Hostname$username = ""; // Username $password = ""; // Password$dbname = ""; // Database name// Connect to the database or display an error$connectionStatus = mysql_connect($hostname, $username, $password) or die(mysql_error());// Select our database here	$selectionStatus = mysql_select_db($dbname) or die(mysql_error());?>

6. Keep Favorite Code Snippets Handy

You’ll be coding a lot of the same things throughout your PHP development career, and keeping code snippets always available will help you save a lot of time. There are several apps that can keep and sync your code snippet collection for you, so no matter where you are, you can always have your snippets available. Some apps you can use to corral your code snippets are Snippet, snippely, Code Collector, and Snipplr(web-based).

Most integrated development environments (IDEs) such as Eclipse (which can store code templates) and Dreamweaver (via the Snippets Panel) may have built-in features for storing code snippets.

Even a simple and well-organized directory called snippets that contain text files (or PHP scripts) — and possibly synced in the cloud using an app like Dropbox if you use multiple computers — can do the trick.

7. Use a Good Source Editor to Save You Time

Your editor is where you’ll spend the majority of your time, so you want to use something that helps you save time. Syntax highlighting is a must and definitely something you should be looking for as a software feature. Other bonuses include code hinting, code navigation and built-in debugging tools. All of these features can end up saving you massive amounts of time. An example of a source code editor/IDE for PHP is phpDesigner.

Take the time to get familiar with your source code editor’s features by reading the documentation and reading tutorials online. A bit of time investment in this arena can really streamline your coding workflow.

Check out this list of source code editors for developers as well as this list of free text editors for coders to discover popular code-editing applications.

8. Use a MySQL Administration Tool (Like phpMyAdmin)

I know some crazy hard-core developers who like working with MySQL (the popularDatabase Management System pairing for PHP) via command line, which, to me, is inefficient and just, well, crazy. It’s a good thing to know how to administer your MySQL database using mysqladmin, but afterwards, you should use a graphical user interface like phpMyAdmin to speed up database development and administration.

phpMyAdmin, in particular, is an excellent open source database viewer/manager that allows you to view your MySQL databases graphically so that you don’t have to waste time doing things via the command line. You can quickly build databases and their tables, export your databases into SQL files, run SQL queries, optimize tables, check for issues, create MySQL database users and set up their privileges quickly, and much more. There is a good chance your web host already has phpMyAdmin installed, and if not, it only takes minutes to install.

Check out this list of the best MySQL database management tools and this list ofMySQL apps for alternatives to phpMyAdmin.

9. Use a PHP Framework

It took me a really long time to accept the fact that using a web application development/rapid application development framework would help me out. You have a small learning curve in the beginning, and there will be a lot of reading to do to learn how the API of the framework works, but you get amazing productivity and efficiency benefits later. Using a framework forces you to use better web development patterns that you might not be using right now.

Using a PHP framework pays off big time when you have to share your code with others later on or when you have to work together with someone; it gives you a standardized platform for building web applications. I learned the importance of this the hard way when I had to start hiring other developers.

Some popular PHP frameworks are CakePHP, CodeIgniter, symfony, and Zend.

10. Connect with Other PHP Developers

You don’t know it all. And even if you think you do, there are thousands of others out there that know how to do something better than you do. Join a PHP community likePHPDeveloper and interact with others. By connecting with other developers, you’ll learn better ways of doing the things you’re currently doing.

Because you’re reading this magazine, there’s a good chance you sling code for a living. And if you sling code for a living, you probably spend a lot of time in your IDE ... which is—because you’re reading this magazine—probably Visual Studio.

Visual Studio 2010 is already an incredibly versatile coding tool. It does pretty much everything except write the code for you, and in many cases it’s getting good at doing that, too. Still, Visual Studio can’t do it all out of the box.

That’s where extensions come to the rescue. Visual Studio 2010 provides robust support for extensibility via custom tools, templates and plug-ins. (Note, however, that the Express versions of Visual Studio don’t support extensions.) If you can’t find the feature you need in Visual Studio, chances are there’s an extension that helps you customize the IDE or provides the tools you need to write code better and faster.

We’ll cover a few of the most popular free extensions for Visual Studio 2010.

Power Tools for Visual Studio There are thousands of extensions out there, and it just so happens that one of the most robust extensions was created by the Visual Studio team. Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tools (bit.ly/g4fUGG) is a package of 15 handy features that range from Solution Navigator (think Solution Explorer on steroids) to tab autocompletion and highly configurable enhancements to tabs. Scott Guthrie explains how each of the features in Productivity Power Tools works on his blog, so check that out for details (bit.ly/aopeNt).

Solution Navigator in Productivity Power Tools

PowerCommands 10.0 PowerCommands 10.0 (bit.ly/hUY9tT), like Productivity Power Tools, is a grab bag of useful extra tools that will speed up or simplify common tasks in the IDE. You get 25 features in the package; they include robust copy and paste enhancements (copying entire classes, for example). The package also includes the ability to format your code, sort using statements and remove unused using references when saving.

Team Foundation Server Power Tools September 2010 Don’t feel left out if you’re using Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS). Microsoft has a set of Power Tools for you, too. This extension (bit.ly/hyUNqo) gives you 11 new features that include check-in policies and item templates, a process editor, TFS command-line tools and Windows Powershell cmdlets, team member management, Windows shell integration and automated database backup.

Visual Studio Color Theme Editor It may not sound as glamorous, but sometimes it’s the little details that make coding that much easier. Take the colors used in the Visual Studio windows, tabs and menus, for instance. Do brighter colors cheer your mood? Are you particularly fond of magenta? Whatever you prefer, Visual Studio Color Theme Editor (bit.ly/fPKKEV) lets you customize all of the environment colors used in the IDE. You can also save themes and share them with your friends.

StudioStyles An even more personal choice is the colorization used for the code itself in your editor. StudioStyles (studiostyl.es) is a Web site that lets you download, create and share the .vssettings files that specify code colorization. Added bonus: These themes can be used with Visual Studio 2010, 2008, 2005 and even the Express versions.

StudioStyles

WordLight Do you ever want to quickly find all the places you’ve used a method or variable name? WordLight (code.google.com/p/wordlight) is a simple extension for Visual Studio 2008 that lets you select some text and instantly highlights all other occurrences of that string in the code file. It also works in the Output, Command and Immediate windows.

Spell Checker If y0u tpye lke I do, the Spell Checker is a lifesaver. The Spell Checker extension (bit.ly/aMrXoM) looks for errors in the non-code portions of your files. It works in any plain-text files, for comments and strings in source code, and for non-tag elements of HTML and ASP files.

TortoiseSVN Add-in for Visual Studio So you’ve written and tested your code. If you’re working on a team or open source project, you probably need to commit your source to a repository. There’s a tool for that.

If you’re using Apache Subversion (subversion.apache.org) source control along with a TortoiseSVN client for Windows (tortoisesvn.tigris.org), there are a couple of Visual Studio extensions that incorporate the TortoiseSVN functionality into the IDE (tsvnaddin.codeplex.com), saving you many steps in the commit process.

VsTortoise When using TFS, you’ll need to add a layer such as SvnBridge (svnbridge.codeplex.com) that translates APIs between Subversion clients like TortoiseSVN (vstortoise.codeplex.com) and TFS.

Another popular source-code management system is Git (git-scm.com), and if that’s your preferred repository, then there’s an extension for you, too. Git Extensions (code.google.com/p/gitextensions) includes shell extensions for Windows Explorer and a Visual Studio plug-in. Plus, you can run most features from the command line.

NuGet Inspired by RubyGems and similar package-management systems from the Linux development world, NuGet (nuget.codeplex.com/) gives Microsoft .NET Framework developers the ability to easily incorporate libraries from source-code repositories directly into their local development projects. NuGet integrates with the Visual Studio 2010 IDE, and you can also run NuGet from the command line or via Windows PowerShell cmdlets.

NuGet

Emacs and Vim Emulation In the beginning there was vi, and it was difficult to learn. Since those early days, Emacs and Vim have battled for supremacy as the One True Editor among coders. If you’ve chosen sides in that debate, yet find yourself using Visual Studio, then rejoice! The keybindings and many other features you know and love from Emacs and Vim are now available in extensions for Visual Studio.

You can follow the progress of VsVim (bit.ly/e3GsMf) developer Jared Parsons via his blog (blogs.msdn.com/b/jaredpar/). More information about Emacs emulation (bit.ly/eXhaIK), along with lots of other great tips, can be found on the Visual Studio Team blog (blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/).

A Gallery of Extensions This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as Visual Studio extensions are concerned. Thousands of templates, custom controls and extensions are available through the Visual Studio Gallery (visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com), and more are being added all the time. Many are free, and there are trial versions available for many of the commercial products.


Write Your Own Extensions Don’t see what you need in the Visual Studio Gallery? Write your own! Visual Studio 2010 includes deep hooks for extensibility—anything from a custom project template to third-party tools that integrate directly with the IDE. Through the Extending Visual Studio developer center (msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/vextend), MSDN Library articles and other resources in the Visual Studio community (bit.ly/aT1bDe), you’ll find a vast amount of information to start creating custom Visual Studio extensions. You’ve already got the tools ... start coding!  

Angry Birds and its variants have dominated the top ranks of iPhone games for the past year. But on Thursday, a game called Bubble Ballousted Angry Birds: Seasons from the No. 1 spot on the App Store’s top free apps list.

Bubble Ball is the work of 14-year-oldRobert Nay, an eighth grader in Spanish Fork, Utah, and his mother Kari. Robert Nay managed to take a free version of Angry Birds Seasons — which has become a cultural phenomenon with tens of millions of downloads — down with his very first iPhone game. On Thursday alone, Bubble Ball (right) was downloaded 400,000 times. Since its launch on Dec. 29, the game has been downloaded 1.5 million times. The top paid app is still Angry Birds.

That’s pretty good for a solo effort. By contrast, Angry Birds was created by a team at Helsinki-based Rovio, which has dozens of employees and has made more than 50 mobile games since 2003. The iPhone has had lots of hits by independent game makers. But it is still a surprise to hear of a 14-year-old scoring such a big hit. And it shows that being clever still pays off.

Nay has toyed with programming in the past. But he found that creating an iPhone game was easy thanks to tools such as the Corona SDK from Ansca Mobile, which lets users create graphically rich applications and games for the iPhone, iPad and Android. A free version lets users create sophisticated apps such as side-scrolling games with physics effects. A paid $349 version lets you publish to the App Store.

Nay learned Lua, the language Corona uses, which was much easier than doing a game in Objective-C, the programming language for most iPhone games. A number of big game studios such as Electronic Arts and Tapulous use Lua to make sure their games are efficiently programmed.

Nay did the work on the programming and the art and his mother helped him by designing most of the game levels. After being encouraged by a friend to create an app, he started work in November. The game has bare-bones graphics, where you try to get a ball to roll from one part of the screen to another by manipulating objects such as a stick or a triangle.

The game went live on the iPhone on Dec. 29 and then the Nays uploaded it to the Android Market about a week and a half later. Corona allows developers to create a game and publish it to both platforms.

On Android, the game hasn’t taken off. But it has grown steadily on the iPhone. Ansca Mobile highlighted the game as its “app of the week” last week, and interest in the title kept on building. At this writing, it’s still No. 1 on the top free apps list.

At some point, Nay says he’ll try to make some money by creating in-app purchases, or virtual goods for sale, inside the game. Ansca Mobile still has to add the feature that will allow the Nays to do that. Once they do, they can start cashing in on all of the traffic and attention that is sure to come.