Earlier today, the long expected Amazon phone was unveiled to the world by Jeff Bezos. There isn't much a company entering the smartphone market can do to shine strictly from hardware. So, Amazon, being as smart as they are, mostly let software design and unique functionality do most of the grunt work.

You can check out the list of hardware and software specs, but at the end of the day, it's what the Fire Phone does that no other phone does today. Dynamic Perspective, Firefly technology, and Mayday.

Dynamic Perspective utilizes the phone's sensors to provide abilities like "peek" where you reveal bits of information on the screen only as you need it, keeping things uncluttered and out of the way. You can also tilt and swivel your phone for shortcuts and actions like attaching photos, revealing menus, toggling the flashlight, and even calling for live help when you're stuck. More after the jump...

Twitter has grown into a massive communication platform, and businesses are heavily utilizing its powers of customer engagement and reach. There is, however, a problem.

As a web developer/designer, most of the accounts I follow are of my peers in the industry, professionals I look up to, and a huge number of companies providing products and services that interest me. The problem here is that everything mashed into a single timeline. All updates from individuals, companies, products, and services, in one big scrollable page... is unmanageable.

Sure, Twitter has lists, but it's not accessible. It's hidden under the 'settings' menu. When you do get to it, you're presented with a list of your lists. I have a bunch of lists that I've created, but I never go to them because nothing pulls me towards it. There's no UX to easily filter between individual, company, product, and service accounts. What's the solution?

Today's WWDC event was the biggest since the original iPhone. Not only did Apple play an incredible round of catch up with the announcement of iOS 8, but their execution, from what I could tell from the presentation, is superb. On top of the elements added to iOS that have been years overdue, the new features/functionality slingshots iOS into the lead. Now, let the real mobile wars begin.

The massive undertaking (that was evidently rushed) when redesigning iOS from scratch with version 7, now reveals to everyone how deep its roots actually go. The design language of iOS 7 was not only enhanced and improved on in itself, but it now encompasses the "platform" aspect through things like extensibility, and large amount of "kits" they have available, haha. So many kits.... (this is a dev thing, btw).

The other thing that most people don't seem to realize is how dependent the iOS and OS X integration has become to the cloud. Several years ago, Apple invested billions of dollars to construct its multi-million square foot datacenter. With iOS 6 through iOS 7, we saw it utilized decently, but only today was its true power and reach revealed. No more guessing games as to what purpose a multi-billion dollar datacenter serves.

Several days ago, I went to an MMA training session at a UFC Gym, detoxified at a Spa Castle with 6 different saunas and multiple pools containing dozens of water jets placed and positioned in every angle to target every spot one's body could ask for.

The soreness from the UFC Gym elevated for about 3 days until all the aches started to fall back. That weekend, I went out to the countryside for a few days in which I engaged in various activities including swimming, badminton, archery, and little bit of hiking.

Over the past week, my workouts have consisted of plenty of cardio, swimming, and arm wrestling. Yea, that last one may seems a little weird, but arm wrestling is one heck of an upper body workout – if you know what you're doing.

I had the honor of arm wrestling Joyce Boone (one of the best female pullers in NY), as well a couple of pros at the training session, which was no different than versing a wall. I take arm wrestling pretty seriously, so hopefully I too can become that proverbial wall.

Swimming is always a fantastic workout. It made me realize that even though I can run a few miles, doing a few laps in the pool had me completely drained with my heart pounding a million beats a second. With that said, I need to figure out how I can start swimming more...

Today's workout consisted of light upper body weight lifting, and some major cardio work. Due to my work schedule, these workouts occur separately throughout the day. Kettle bell at work, cardio in the evening, pull-ups to finish it all off.

Using a 20 pound kettle bell, I worked on biceps, triceps, lower back, lats, traps, and shoulders. I did 1 to 2 sets of each of these workouts just to kick things in for what's to come. Later in the day...

That treacherous Arctic Enema. Nothing else scares the crap out of me more than the Arctic Enema. There's something about being engulfed freezing ice cold water that absolutely terrifies me. The shock, the sting, the burning sensation from the heatless* water taking your form! I'm gonna start taking cold showers, and maybe even work my way up to ice-filled baths! Yes. No limits.

I need to start obstacle training... Cardio alone just ain't gonna cut it for too much longer. As a results, I need another pair of shoes – this time for trail running. I've got a long road ahead of me with not too much time to go. October 13, 2013 is creepin' up real good! My activity overview after the jump...

A couple of days ago I registered to participate in the October 2013 Tough Mudder event in New Jersey. I am super excited! I have never done anything like this, but always wanted to. I love physical challenge, especially when it forces me off my behind and makes me crave energy, adrenaline, and performance!

I considered today to be day 01 of my training. Starting out light. Pushing my cardio by running up many flights of stairs, pushups and pull-ups, leg raises on the Iron Gym, and some good 'ol stretching. The new Adidas Marathon shoes will start serving me well when I get back into running and sprinting – possibly starting tomorrow.

Also considering joining a free-reign gym, one where people go for Parkour, Gymnastics, Capoeira, and more. Improving natural strength that benefits you when traversing harsh terrain is more important than lifting heavy weights and drinking protein shakes. I'm after lean muscle development, toning, and losing approximately 15 to 20 lbs. of excess body fat. The stronger I get, and the more weight I shed, my power-to-weight strength ratio will jump even higher. More after the jump...

At the beginning of 2012, I blogged about my goals and aspirations, both personal and professional. My very last point was to "be perceptive of great opportunities," and that, I feel, sums up the reason why 2012 went the way it did...

First and foremost, in March, I accepted a position as a Developer at a digital agency in NYC. A great opportunity presented itself, and I decided to act on it after discussions with friends and family. I knew that accepting this position would mean bad news for a bunch of other things I had planned, like branding and developing my company, writing more and redesigning this blog, and launching 2 or more personal projects.

Accepting this role has improved my skills very fast, which is something I felt I needed to do. Responsive Web Design, complex JavaScript interactivity, and working on large/enterprise-level projects are now well up my alley. More thoughts and reflections after the jump...

Chrome 21 (and below) has some strange behavior towards elements with the “contenteditable” attribute, if you dynamically clear its text/content on click using $('.className').text("") or $('.className').html(""). After one click, the text/content clears, but there’s no cursor. If you click again, then the cursor appears.

Note 1: Clicking an empty area of the "contenteditable" element makes the cursor appear. Clicking the text itself, however, makes you click a 2nd time to show the cursor.
Note 2: Tabbing/focusing into the element DOES NOT have the same problem.

This is very annoying, and surprising that only Chrome behaves this way. Basically, when you're hooking onto the "focus" event to clear your element's content, clicking the text of the element doesn't trigger the "focus" event you need. That's why the second click is required – to trigger the actual focus event. And again, clicking into your element's empty area fires off the focus event with one click.

Code example after the jump...