Categories
MLOTW

Movie line of the week answer

Good morning movie lovers! We have a winner!

Congratulations to my friend, and long time MLOTW participant, Mr. Prasenjeet Dutta!

The correct answer was…

Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland is one of those films I can watch over and over for some reason. Love it.

Categories
Life

T.T.F.N LEVEL, I Still ♥ You

It’s true. Today is my last day with LEVEL Studios. It’s hard to say goodbye to a place like this, especially when you do love her and her people. It’s been a fun year, but it’s time for me to move on.

Why?

That’s the hard part to explain, because I really do love this company. It’s full of smart, energetic, people. It has a great company culture and fantastic leadership. The “problem” falls squarely with me.

They're bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun...Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the native client experience. I’ve had the honor to work with a team that created a new segment in Windows drawing applications and I’ve worked on native iOS applications and I LOVE that experience. I think User Experience, or UX, is so important and I believe the best way to provide that important experience is through native API’s provided by the platform vendor. So, yes, I’m going back to writing desktop software. No, it’s not on the Mac, or iOS, even though I’d love to do that. I’m going back to writing Windows software. That’s right, back to C++ and Windows! I can see my fellow LEVEL’ites rolling their eyes. That’s ok, I likes me some native clients. It’s in my blood.

Where?

Where is a great question. We’re staying in San Luis Obispo, we don’t plan on leaving this place. I’m going to work for a company called CygNet. They’re a product company. From the CygNet website.

CygNet Software provides enterprise software and industry solutions that collect, manage and distribute essential operations data. Robust, proven and evergreen, CygNet extends customer horizons with improved operational efficiency and increased market responsiveness

I’ll be working on products used to collect and analyze data from Oil and Gas Pipelines, and I get to work on UI again! Yes, I’m pretty stoked about it!

On the LEVEL

LEVEL is a definite powerhouse when it comes to the web. In fact I’d encourage young up-and-coming web developers or designers to consider LEVEL as a place to start your career. You’ll learn loads. LEVEL is chock full of great web developers, not to mention fantastic designers.

A wonderful boquet of flowers.Oh, yeah, and there’s this great group of folks, they keep in a dark room, that develop great, high performance, highly scalable, web services. One of our web services is serving near four million users worldwide, and growing every day. Yes, LEVEL can build these things. Shhhhhh, keep that under your hat, it’s a secret!

Would I work here again? Absolutely. That’s what made this decision so tough.

Epilog

I don’t believe in saying Goodbye, goodbye is forever. I’ll just say TTFN *Le Publetta.

*Le Publetta is a combination of LEVEL, Publicis, and Rosetta. I think it’s a strong name, don’t you?

Categories
Business

REJECTED!

The FastScripts LogoDaniel Jalkut: “Unfortunately, this update is not available on the Mac App Store. Apple has now rejected it twice, citing the behavior of the app when it is used to run one of Apple’s own bundled scripts:

/Library/Scripts/Mail Scripts/Create New Message.scpt

This script is terrible to start with, but starting in OS X Lion, it simply doesn’t work. It fails with cryptic errors, and FastScripts faithfully reports them. Apple is rejecting FastScripts for the behavior of a faulty script that is bundled with OS X Lion.”

This is super frustrating. Daniel is the creator, and publisher, of my favorite Mac Weblogging software, MarsEdit. He’s a super nice guy and seems to take things in stride, but this, this would put me over the edge for a time.

There is a silver lining. A Mac Developer has an option, at least for the time being. Daniel is offering FastScripts 2.6.1 through his own store. Get it while it’s HOT!

Daniel is an Indie Mac Developer, and all around good fella. Please support him and his family by purchasing one of his awesome, hand crafted, Mac products. No, I’m not paid to endorse Mr. Jalkut or Red Sweater Software. I just like his software.

Categories
Business

Competition In The Loyalty Space

Forbes: On the loyalty front, Walker wants Foursquare to be about much more than just a punchcard that gives an extra sandwich for buying 10 sandwiches. Walker wants Foursquare–and its merchants–to be able to know much more about users and what they like most at a business. “Facebook is the center of your online universe,” Walker says. “I’d love Foursquare to be the center of your offline loyalty universe.”

It looks like the kids at Punchd were on to something. Google vs. Foursquare vs. Groupon vs. [Who?].

The loyalty wars are on!

Categories
Life

Free State Initiative

Free State Initiative [Hat Tip @arsydotorg]: “Our mission is to create one or more Free States somewhere in the world. Our strategy is to seek out a potential partner country or countries which are willing to host a Free State in a scarcely populated region with little or no natural resources.”

This is very interesting. Want to reboot? This could be your chance.

Categories
MLOTW

Movie line of the week

Hot buttered popcorn and a movie, ahhh!Good morning movie liners. We saw this film again last night, for the umpteenth time, and I knew this would be my line today.

Good luck!

You used to be much more…”muchier.” You’ve lost your muchness.

Ok, quick, what movie! Send your guesses here.

Categories
Business

More on Patent Trolls

Washington Post: Gizmodo senior reporter Mat Honan disagrees, arguing that patent trolling is suffocating America’s ability to innovate, particularly in the technology sector. Honan wrote on Tuesday, “These are the tapeworms crawling through the nutrient-rich belly of American innovation, full of bile and [expletive], slowly starving us to death.”

Sigh.

Categories
Politics

John McCain on Fire!

John is MadNew York Times: “By that flawed logic, he said, “Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced budget amendment and reform entitlements and the Tea Party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth.”

“This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into G.O.P. nominees,” he jeered, referring to two losing Tea Party candidates for the Senate in 2010.”

Apparently the fire brand version of John McCain is back in action!

PREACH IT SENATOR MCCAIN!

Categories
Business

Software Patents Are Good, Right?

Cigarettes suckguardian.co.uk: “Simon Maddox, a UK developer, has removed all his apps from US app stores on both iOS and Android for fear of being sued by Lodsys, a company which has already sued a number of iOS and Android developers which it says infringe its software patent.”

Remember boys and girls, software patents are good for you!

No, wait, it gets worse. Apple is now suing HTC over silly stuff. This is definitely not moving technology and innovation forward. It’s taking us backward.

I feel really bad for the Indies of the software world. They’re just trying to eek out a living and they have to deal with Patent Trolls that don’t actually create anything. Pathetic.

Categories
Apple

Draconian App Store Rules

Jim Dovey: “The store was removed because Apple rejected any updates which included it, period. They also rejected any updates which stated that Apple required its removal, or indeed any mention of ‘compliance with App Store guidelines’. It was further rejected for the cardinal sin of allowing users to create a Kobo account within the app. Then it was rejected for providing a link to let users create an account outside the app. Then it was rejected for simply mentioning that it was possible to sign up, with no direction on where or how one could do that. Then it was rejected for making any mention of the Kobo website. Then for any mention of ‘our website’ at all, in any language. We additionally cannot make any assertions that Kobo provides content for sale, however obliquely.”

How annoying. Makes you want to poke yourself in the eye with a sharp stick. Less pain.

I don’t much care for it, but it is their store, they make the rules. Either take it, or leave it. Enough leave it and they’ll make a change. Vote with your wallet.