Dec 24 2010

iPhone Frameworks

As mobile devices become more and more entrenched and as more mobile devices become available there is a growing number of people that want to quickly develop an idea into an app. Developers of all sorts are picking up Objective-C to develop the next top selling mobile-based and touch enabled app. If you don’t want to learn Objective-C, there are several mobile frameworks to choice.

    Rhomobile – A cross-platform mobile app development.
    Titanium – A cross-platform native application stack.
    MonoTouch – Write iPhone and iPod Touch applications in C# and .NET.
    iWebkit – A simple framework to create your own iPhone and iPod Touch webapps.
    TapLynx – Rapidly develop iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch Apps without learning Cocoa.
    PhoneGap – PhoneGap is an open source development framework for building cross-platform mobile apps.
    jQTouch – A jQuery plugin for mobile web development on the iPhone, iPhone Touch, and other forward-thinking devices.
    Cocos2D for iPhone – A framework for building 2D games and graphical applications.

Dec 9 2010

Missing iTunes Features

By the lack of features in iTunes, you would think the current version is still under better not version 10.1. As far as consumer applications go, iTunes is pretty polish but it is immediately evident that most of the engineering staff go into the iTunes store and not the management of your digital content. It feels to me that there are a lot of key features missing in iTunes. It might be that I just don’t know some secret incantation of how to do what I want, but I’ve searched online with little success.

Here is a short list of features I wish were available in iTunes.

iTunes should have the ability to activate, and most importantly deactivate, a computer or device from your iTunes account online. I want to log in and see what devices are activated with my account ad deactivate them.

One other feature I require from iTunes is the ability to sort and filter music and other content by the account that purchased it. I have a repository of music bought from several different accounts from different family members or friends. In some cases, I want to deactivate their account and delete their music.

One problem that I’ve frequently encounter is that the album art of music get’s corrupted. Over time I’ve seen that the album art for a song will be of a different artist. I wish I can have a way to tell iTunes to correct or update it’s album art repository.


Nov 29 2010

Random Thoughts November 2010

No explanation required, here are some random thoughts that occurred to me during the past month. These ideas are usually to long to force into 140 character limit of Twitter but not fully develop to merit their own post.

There are a slew of collaborative and social tools that still compete with email. A bunch of web 2.0 document management applications that still compete with the shared network drive. A lot of financial software biggest competitor is excel spreadsheets. And not to mention the Customer Relationship Systems that compete with phone numbers in scraps of paper and a pile of business cards. Think of an industry, and your biggest technology competitor most often the dead tree technology like paper, and filing cabinets, and entry level end products.

Programming languages don’t die with a marketing bang, but fade away with the whimpers of programmers that have to maintain applications written in them.

Shared network folder must die.  Hard an slow to search or specific document, people are always restructuring the folders and moving the files, there are always duplicate files, common for people to forget to track their changes, track changes in word is horrible when the file changes a lot and often.

In a world with smart phones and 3G data plans, why do people still use cell phone text messaging?  People have done the math and proven that one megabyte of text can cost over $1000 dollars in phone charges but only cost the phone carriers pennies to provide.  There needs to be a simple service that does group text messaging that doesn’t rely on a single protocol, such as SMS. Just how Apple’s FaceTime works on Wi-Fi and does not depend on the phone carriers, someone should develop a text messaging platform that can work without a texting plan. An ideal text messaging platform would need to work with a other protocols, such as email, Facebook, Twitter, Google Voice, and SMS.

Microsoft should do anything possible to get mobile developers to start developing for the Windows Mobile 7 platform.  Microsoft should give out Visual Studio IDEs, books, free cloud hosting, and do a 1-day training tour to promote to mobile developers. But most importantly, Microsoft has to demonstrate how their platform can be monetized by independent developers.

The idea of a star performer is unfortunately often modeled after celebrity performers where a team is there to make the star shine brighter. In a development team a star performer makes the team better.

If Hollywood set out to design a better mouse trap they would rent you the mouse trap, charge for each mouse caught with it, and they own all rights to the mouse.

From time to time a semi truck or two carrying a shipping container full of Apple goods is delivered to a Apple distribution facility. Each shipping container is followed by a rent a cop security vehicle. Each shipping container holds anywhere from $1-3 million dollars worth of Apple products just off the assembly line in China. All of a sudden I feel like going on a mission.

It’s widely known that Michael Jackson purchase the rights to The Beatles music catalog. It’s also well known that Steve Jobs had for over ten years tried to get music of The Beatles into the iTunes music store. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but it’s of very little surprise that a year after Micheal’s death Steve Jobs was finally able to buy the rights to carry the whole music catalog of The Beatles.

The Beatles on iTunes

The Beatles on iTunes


Nov 25 2010

Retweet October 2010

From time to time I just blast tweets about software development, project planning, team dynamics, or whatever else comes to mind. Here is a synopsis of recent tweets and rants. If you want to follow the conversation follow me at techknow and/or juixe and I’ll be sure to follow back.

Software Development

  • If rhythm is a dancer, then algorithm is a break dancer.
  • If you were a Java language reserve word what word would you be? I would be volatile!
  • I get personally insulted when I am prompted to prove my humanness with a captcha. It makes me wanna bust a cap-tcha on some webdeveloper!!!
  • Is there group think in the development community? Yes, but we build patterns around group think and call it Best Practices.

Team Leadership

  • Change your perspective and you can change the world.
  • If you don’t have an original idea you can remix existing ideas in original ways!
  • Go hard, go home, go big. Pick two.
  • If a web site’s end users are not paying customers, then the end users are the product that web site then sell to their advertisers.
  • Why do people compensate their inability to communicate with the belief that others just know what they mean, you know what I mean?
  • Hype is the food of lemmings.
  • The plan was to have no plan, the backup plan was to leave the backup plan at home.
  • Most people are natural born followers, it’s human nature.
  • The toughest competition doesn’t always come from a competitor trying to build a clone of your product but from market shift in the industry

Product Placement

  • In terms of hardware, mobile, and even operating systems Microsoft is anywhere between 3-5 years behind the leader.
  • Startups age really fast in Internet time, by my calculation Digg is already and Old Media Company.
  • Like what percent of Tumblr’s posts are reblogs and reposts?
  • I want JJ Abrams to do a movie about do a remake of The Muppets in an alternate time line like he did for Star Trek.
  • I want an iPhone that transforms into an iPad when I need a bigger screen.
  • Google is an advertising company with great search technology. Facebook is a virtual share cropping company with great social technology.
  • Who collects more personal data and knows more about a given user, Facebook or Google?
  • Apple should add a few filters to their iPhone camera app.

Mini Meme Machine

  • Scotty and Christopher Walken Mashup: Captain, I’m giving her all’s she got.  She needs more cowbell.
  • You know who would be great in a reality television show? A prison gang! Imagine, Real World San Quentin.
  • r-EPO, the performance-enhancing drug of champions!
  • Monetize common sense because people don’t have it.
  • I want to trademark the & char so that I could file a trademark infringement to all law firms with names of the form Dumb Dumber & Dumbest.
  • The best part of a bagel is the creme cheese.
  • My all time historical hero is Johannes Kepler.
  • Your life comes with terms of service, batteries not included, void where prohibited.
  • In Silicon Valley, everyone drinks the kool-aid but using bottled artisan water from a 10,000 year old glacier.
  • In Silicon Valley, everyone is more interested in their piece of the pie than in the recipe of success.

Quote

  • I didn’t mean for it to be released so quickly because I wanted to control peoples’ being offended by it. – Mark Zuckerberg
  • I think people might be slightly offended but whatever, maybe there’s a way to control that. – Mark Zuckerberg
  • Quitting while you are ahead is not the same thing as quitting. – American Gangster
  • Living at home with your parents is a very powerful contraception. – David Willetts
  • We should start a new social media web 2.0 holiday: Friend, Fan, and Follower Appreciation Day!!!

Nov 22 2010

The Ultimate Geek Gift Guide 2010

This geek gift guide is not so much for geeks and techies but for those that have geeks and techies in their life and need a little help in finding the right geek gift this holiday season. If you want to wow the geek in your life with the latest technology gadget you need to look no further.

The hottest piece of technology this year has been the Apple iPad. The iPad is great for geeks no matter their passion, music, photography, gaming, social media, etc. A geek that travels a lot would enjoy the 3G iPad so that they can always be connected no mater where they are. Whether you give the geek in your life an iPad or if they already have one, there are a ton of great accessories such as the iPad cases. I have been happy with the standard Apple iPad Case but for something more eye catching then consider the DODOcase. I also enjoy this leather portfolio iPad slipcase.

Targus Hughes Leather Portfolio Slipcase

Targus Hughes Leather Portfolio Slipcase

To get the most out of an iPad you need apps, for stocking stuffers you can consider getting a few iTunes gift cards which can be used to purchase apps, music, books, and movies from the iTunes store. I’ve already written regarding my favorite iPad apps.

Not every geek is into Apple products. Fortunately, there are other viable touch-based tablets such as the Google Android powered Archos 9 PC Tablet or the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

For the avid reader in your life, nothing beats the Amazon Kindle. There are other electronic book readers but the Kindle is the most wished-for and most gifted ebook reader. The latest generation of the Kindle is smaller than previous versions and Amazon provides just about every top book in the Kindle format. What I love best about the Amazon Kindle is that your digital library is available to you in just about every device, iPhone, iPad, desktop, Android mobile device, and more.

This holiday season the most sought after family oriented game will not be on the Wii, it will be on the XBox 360. The XBox 360 has a set of games that do no require a controller to play, instead you play them by controlling the game play with your body. The Kinect Sensor has a series of camera’s that capture your body movements and uses that information to control the character in the game. The best game on for the Kinect Sensor has to be Dance Central. Dance Central doesn’t require any controller or pad for you to get down with your dance moves, you just dance in front of you television set.. The other games to look forward to is DJ Hero 2 and Rock Band 3.

Xbox 360 250 GB Kinect Bundle

Xbox 360 250 GB Kinect Bundle

As everyone already knows, the standard geek uniform is jeans and a t-shirt. Any self respecting geek needs to have some ThinkGeek shirts in his wardrobe. ThinkGeek gear is like Armani Exchange for geeks, binary fashionable and geek chic.

If you need more suggestions, take a look at previous years geek gift guides: The Ultimate Geek Gift Guide 2009, 2008


Nov 18 2010

Predictions 2011

Just like opinions, at the end of the year everyone has their own predictions for the new year. I came to these predictions by reading the back of caps of green tea bottles. If you like to see my accuracy with past predictions see the predictions for 2009 and 2010.

  • Mark Zuckerborg will be summoned by congress for a congressional hearing to clarify privacy settings and violations when some White House intern force checks in the President at a Hooters.
  • Digg will buy Reddit from Conde Nast and rebrand the merged organization as Reddigg.
  • DVDs and Blu Rays sales will slow as users switch to on demand streaming service such as Netflix and Apple iTunes.
  • Groupon will be purchased by Yahoo for $1.5 billion dollars.
  • Facebook will have a major privacy and security flaw but non of its users will notice because they all found a pony in their stream.
  • Google will allow its developers to only use cheap commodity Linux machines. Google employees will no longer be allowed to program in Macs.
  • Google will start to aggressively push and market the Go programming language as an replacement of the Java programming language in the enterprise.
  • Google will buy PostreSQL.
  • Google will buy the Library of Congress.
  • Quora will buy the domain ask.com.
  • Ticket Master will buy Eventbrite.
  • Rupert Murdoch will sell MySpace for $35 million.
  • Mashable will be sold to Rupert Murdoch for an undisclosed $50 million dollars.
  • Michael Bay will write, Steven Spielberg will direct, and Johnny Deep will star in Zynga: The Movie.
  • Zynga and Rock Star Games will co-develop a crossover game called Grand Theft Auto: Farmville.