Ryan Twomey

Web developer and entrepreneur in Woburn, MA.

May 26, 2008 12:31am

Bookwatch: Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X gets updated

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Way back in December, our Christmas Gift Guide featured our pick of the many OS X-related books out there. One of the recommendations was the (very…
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May 25, 2008 9:53pm

Is mobile Internet really such a good thing?

Here’s an interesting argument to temper expectations in the “mobile internet” market, describing why a strategy of building a company on top of the whims of the telcos isn’t a particularly good one.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with mobile or with some of the great new mobile applications and devices, but we have to be careful to remember that most mobile networks that actually work are built on infrastructure that is operated by a small number of mobile operators who use a lot of regulated and closed technology.
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May 25, 2008 9:03pm

Come Saturday Morning: Bike Commuting for Newbies

With $4.00 a gallon gas staring us in the face — and the near-certainty of $5.00 a gallon gas before the summer is over — here are some tips for those of you who are considering pedaling instead of driving to work.
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May 25, 2008 12:49pm

The Cube lives again, sorta

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Here’s a clever blending of Apple past and present, in keeping with ourpost yesterday on Mac mini mods. Rich Willis has managed to stuff a Mac mini, an external HD, and an Airport Extreme into the clear plastic shell of an old G4 Cube. 
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May 25, 2008 11:53am

spider_test

A cool way to automatically spider your entire rails app before deployment, checking for any broken links, bugs preventing page loads, etc.
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May 24, 2008 10:16am

aTV Flash goes commercial: plug-and-play hacks for your Apple TV

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Engineering souls have been hacking up the Apple TV for a good while now, but those too scared of completely ruining their box have had to…
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May 23, 2008 11:47pm

Wt, C++ Web Toolkit

Ever wanted to write a web app in C++?  Now you can - using Wt.

Wt (pronounced ‘witty’) is a C++ library and application server for developing and deploying web applications. It is not a ‘framework’, which enforces a way of programming, but a library.

I’m impressed with how they handle events - it’s similar to the Qt-style signals/slots method, which I think is an intuitive, powerful way to handle callbacks in C++.  I’m particularly intrigued about using this for somewhat complex, high-throughput applications such as DB-intensive web apps where scaling using traditional means (i.e. caching) doesn’t yield enough performance increase.
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May 23, 2008 11:06pm

Palmist: A Handy Tool for Finding and Fixing MySQL Bottlenecks

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May 23, 2008 9:52pm

SimpleConsole - Building Console Apps

cwalcott:

Shared by Costa
This is neat - a simple Ruby MVC framework, but for command line apps, not webapps.
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May 23, 2008 2:46pm

Is the popularity of unit tests waning?

It would be a shame to have unit testing disappear and its current users viewed as aging, pining developers hankering for a technology the world has largely passed by. That would return programmers to the tried-and-true practice of glassy-eyed staring at a debugger for hours—something I have not missed at all.
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May 23, 2008 9:24am

Vague Rumor of 3G iPhone Delay Was Enough To Make Apple Slide

Apple (AAPL) shares appear to be losing ground this afternoon on rumors involving possible delays of the 3G iPhone. Now, I would point out that Apple has not even officially confirmed that there will be a 3G iPhone; but the device has been widely expected to debut on June 9, when CEO Steve Jobs give the keynote at the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference at Moscone West in San Francisco.
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May 22, 2008 11:35am

MacBook Airror

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Apparently some audio can’t be turned up to F11.
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May 22, 2008 11:35am

HamachiX Updated with Leopard Support [Featured Mac Download]


Mac OS X Leopard only: Our favorite free virtual private network client for the Mac, HamachiX, has been updated (finally!) to work with Leopard. HamachiX is a graphical front end to…
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May 22, 2008 11:35am

Outsource Your Subscription Billing


ScreenshotWe’ve written before about the difficulties that independent web workers have creating and supporting useful (and salable) products by themselves. One key is to outsource as much as you…
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May 22, 2008 11:17am

Starbucks Became Day Old Coffee Long Ago

To be successful again, Starbucks needs to recreate excitement in both coffee taste and atmosphere. The South Beach store in Miami Beach is an example of great eclectic atmosphere. It is a Hear Music café. Thoughtful integration of music and coffee enhances, not distracts from the stores.
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