June 2008
69 posts
Want To Sell An iPhone App? Got Six Months To Wait... →
Just got a phone call an hour ago from an Apple rep: my software company has been accepted into the iPhone Developer Program. Cool, considering the waiting list has stretched out to some 6 months:
Apple’s iPhone apps platform, launching on July 11, could be a big hit. But if you’re a developer who wants to cash in on it, we hope you’re patient — or have a hook-up at...
“Massachusetts remains the “gold standard” for other states thanks to...”
– Massachusetts is the most tech savvy state, again
The unary ampersand in Ruby →
Okay, be honest: how often do you use the unary & in Ruby?
A marshmallow toasting dragon slayer from Montréal asked about the unary &. I like this question, because when I saw it, I realized immediately that although I’ve figured out how to use it to accomplish certain things, writing an answer serves the excellent purpose of forcing myself to learn more.
In remembrance of Prof. Arthur Chou
I just heard the news that a former professor of mine has passed away. I just sent an email to a few contacts I keep in touch with since school, and I thought I’d list a couple of the highlights:
He was the faculty sponsor of my computer game development club, and I couldn’t have gotten it started without his leadership and help.
When he was starting the bioinformatics...
“I guess you can either sell $20 software to 10,000 people a year, or $20,000...”
– Building a Software Company: How to sell your software for $20,000
“If you just put MBAs in place — or other professional managers without deep...”
– The MBA myth - (37signals)
Ruby security vulnerabilities →
Here is the news from the Rails Log:
Drew Yao at Apple uncovered a handful of nasty security vulnerabilities affecting all current versions of Ruby. The details are still under wraps because an…
Just watched X-Men: The Last Stand. Not good.
ActiveMerchant is about as easy as it gets
I’ve been deeply involved in a lot of ActiveMerchant code lately, and I have to say, I’m quite pleasantly surprised with how well it’s integrated with various payment gateways. In the past, I’ve done some AM using PayPal as the gateway (a client I was working with needed the Website Payments system implemented, and a separate project required the WPP, both from PayPal). I...
fish →
“The engineers on the Wikipedia team may not take themselves too seriously, but...”
– A Look Inside Wikipedia’s Infrastructure
The 10 worst-managed companies in America →
Looks like SBUX clocked in at number 4 on the 24/7 Wall St 10 Worst-Managed Companies in America list. I think they deserve to be there, though it would have been nice to see some discussion on the changes being implemented by recently-returned founder Howard Shultz. One of the sticking points Shultz has been trumpeting has been focus, and that’s been the major issue the company has faced...
“A transatlantic tunnel will be done. We just have to be as interested in it as...”
– Trans-Atlantic MagLev | Popular Science
Bootstrappers Beware →
A lot of people are damn religious about bootrapping businesses. Especially nowadays when it’s so easy to start a software business– you just need a few hackers, Ruby on Rails, a cheap virtual…
ARDAgent setuid allows root access, but there's a... →
Filed under: Security
Updates: See the end of the post for current info.
We’ve been getting quite a bit of email since yesterday’s anonymous Slashdot posting of a security problem…
MultiFireFox 2.0 →
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools
Given the fact that lots of folks are downloading FireFox 3 as of late, I thought this might be a good time to highlight MultiFireFox 2.0….
Firefox 3 vs. Safari 3: typography showdown →
Filed under: Internet, Graphic Design
Ralf Hermann recently took a look at the new typography features found in Firefox 3, pitting them against what’s been available in Safari 3 for a…
Parallels Server for Mac available now →
Filed under: Enterprise, Software, Apple Professional, XServe
In October, when Apple introduced a change in policy allowing Leopard Server to run in a virtual environment on…
Watching the Celtics while coding up some super-secret invotrak features
Service Monitoring Dashboards are mandatory for... →
Google App Engine went down earlier today. GAE lacks a production service monitoring dashboard, which means that many people either found out from their apps being unavailable or from Mike…
Can Twitter Be Saved? →
If there’s anything Twitter can be counted on for, lately it’s been the service’s instability. The situation got so bad that avid twitterers have now gotten used to loading up …
Mozilla struggles with Firefox 3 release →
Filed under: Internet Tools
Promised at 10 a.m. Pacific time (1 p.m. Eastern), Mozilla was eager to set a one-day world-record for the release of Firefox 3. With most of the day already…
The Social Networking Bust Cometh →
Cracks are emerging in the social networking bubble that has been puffing up for the last year or so.
Facebook’s crack-down on app-spam has dampened the previously euphoric growth of many social…
Firefox 3 Is Given to the World – Or Maybe Not →
Looking for Firefox 3? So will a lot of people today, as the Firefox project isn’t launching until 10am PDT, which, as Glyn Moody points out at Linux Journal, may come as a surprise to many people:
…for the vast majority of the world, Firefox 3 is being launched inconveniently late on Tuesday or early on Wednesday. That means huge numbers of people will be kicking their heels for...
How to Resize Your Parallels Drive, and Get... →
Adobe AIR Goes to Work: 6 Apps for the Corporate... →
By now, you’ve heard of Adobe AIR - the cross-OS runtime that lets you run rich internet applications on your desktop. We’ve covered several of our favorite apps in the past, as well as …
Forget Twitter: It's For The Tragically Connected →
Lets get real about this, to paraphrase Loren Feldman, “Twitter: people write stuff, people read stuff. That’s it”. There is no big social networking secret at work here. It’s simply a…
8 Things You Should Include In Your Terms of... →
If you’ve been a solo freelancer for any significant stretch of time, you’ve probably learned the hard way that a work project can go horribly wrong. They turn out to be life lessons in the long…
What does "ad hoc" app distribution mean for... →
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone
In the din of announcements from WWDC on Monday, one of the underreported features for iPhone apps is “ad hoc” app distribution: registering up…
Git smart: How we're using Git to track our source... →
What is Git? Git is a directory content tracker (i.e. it lets you keep track of the contacts of directories as they change over time). It was developed originally by Linus Torvalds (creator of…
It doesn't have to be all or nothing with a... →
Startup mythology demands that to create something great, you need superhuman sacrifices. You need to work for no pay, you need to put in 120 hours/week, you need to preferably sleep under the desk…
TomTom: Nav system "runs on the iPhone already" →
Filed under: iPhone
Reuters is reporting that TomTom, manufacturers of portable, consumer GPS devices, have got their service up and running for the iPhone. “Our navigation system runs on…
Managing "Unproductive" Meetings →
I went on a bike ride this morning with my friend Jimmy and we got to talking about business (not the venture business because Jimmy’s not in tech/venture/web/startups). I asked him if he takes a…
Trent Reznor is showing show business how it's... →
Trent Reznor is busy demonstrating how a bankable artist can go independent, give away music for free, and still make a mint. Though he initially expressed concern over an album he…
iPhone SDK NDA still in effect →
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, WWDC, Apple, Developer, iPhone
NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) are very common in the high tech world. Companies routinely make journalists,…
Gmail problems and iPhone 3G
An interesting tech-related day today. First, problems with Gmail meant I had a difficult time all morning staying in touch with clients. I use Apple Mail to connect to my Gmail account (via IMAP), and I found I had connection problems that prevented me from doing pretty much anything. It seems a lot of other people were having connectivity issues with Gmail as well lately, and I wonder if this...
Thinking the “Mobile Me” name is terrible, though still an interesting-looking service.
AAPL recovering after initial WWDC nosedive →
Filed under: WWDC, Apple Financial
In heavy trading volume today, Apple stock (AAPL) is down four percent after initially dropping to 176.23 halfway through the keynote at 1:55 p.m….
Quickly getting lunch before the keynote starts
Wondering if Twitter will make it through the day. Someone, pre-promising it will seems like tempting fate…
Twitter Prepares for Upcoming WWDC Keynote →
Tomorrow will be the start of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference. The anticipation for the keynote is high with the rumor-mill buzzing about the 3G iPhone being announced at the keynote…
WWDC coverage schedule for today →
Filed under: WWDC
While San Francisco still lies sleeping (with a few notable exceptions), we’re gearing up for a full day & week of WWDC coverage. Here are some of the times to…
Watch, Listen & Read Live Coverage of WWDC08 →
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference will be a attracting a lot of buzz tomorrow. Anticipation will be high and even Twitter is preparing for a lot of traffic. For those that can’t make…
“Here’s the situation: it’s 1984, and you’re assigned to write...”
– prog21: A Spellchecker Used to Be a Major Feat of Software Engineering
How to Comment About Your Company on Blog Posts,... →
For every 1000 people who read a tech blog post, there may be one that leaves a comment. Lurking in the crowd are often any number of people who work for companies related to the subject of the…
Amazon Down For An Hour And Counting →
The Amazon outage, first noticed by Twitter users at as early as 10:24 am PST this morning (I’d like to Twitter except that it’s down), has gone on for an hour now. It’s not necessarily…
LinkedIn Architecture →
Here’s an interesting overview of the LinkedIn architecture. As a LinkedIn user, it’s fun to see how familiar parts of the service come together; as a web developer, it’s fun to see how a site with millions of users scales was built.
Going through the stats, I’m particularly intrigued to see a couple main points. First, there’s no ORM. I’m not particularly...
“Of course, the biggest promise of Android isn’t its UI but its openness, and...”
– Android, it’s the browser stupid | last100
SquirrelFish could make Safari a lot faster →
Filed under: Internet, Internet Tools
Safari is about to get a whole lot faster. The Surfin’ Safari weblog has written about SquirrelFish, the code name (and what a code name it is) for…
Why Apple's iPhone Apps Platform Could Spark Huge... →
Next Monday, Apple (AAPL) chief Steve Jobs is expected to show off the long-awaited, second-edition iPhone. But some of the most important products Jobs will demo won’t be made by Apple —…