Joe Hewitt: “And so, I’m independent now, and I’m going to pour myself into understanding the needs of modern developers and designers, and creating software to fill those needs. There are so many opportunities that I can’t even predict what I will end up building, but I am pretty sure I know where I am going to start. I can’t wait.”
Good luck.
Scripting News: “I just want to read the news, not be impressed by your programming prowess, or compliance with the latest Silicon Valley fad.”
This is one of the things that bugs me most about web user interfaces. There is zero consistency. Something we all talk about on platforms is consistency; Mac OSX apps should look and feel like Mac apps, Windows apps should look and feel like Windows apps. What about the web? On the web it’s “trend of the moment” thrown together in some stylish way.
At best the web is inconsistent. At worst it’s a complete UI/UX mess.
Strange isn’t it? You work for years to make sure your desktop apps remain consistent with the platform and now it’s a no holds barred race to the bottom.
Of course most people will disagree with me because they’re doing websites and that’s fine. This is just one curmudgeon’s opinion.
HASHTAG Fresno: “A new collaborative co-work, hackerspace in the crazy Tower District. Caffeine, internet, and people like you. 24 hour access. Pizza across the street. Coffee next door.”
Makes me wish I were an Indie Developer! For $29.00/month you get a space to work with other creative people. Absolutely brilliant idea! Sure, I know it’s not new, but it’s needed in Fresno. There are a lot of creatives and developers there, they’re just hiding. Hopefully this brings them out into the open.
I know I’ve called Fresno a Technology Black Hole, but that one post made me realize Fresno has a large collective of great designers and developers, and probably generated more great reader commentary than any other post on my weblog.
I ♥ HASHTAG Fresno, just for taking the leap of faith and giving this a go.
Be sure to follow them on Twitter and Facebook, and don’t miss the 59 Days of Code kickoff tonight, 10PM at HASHTAG Fresno.
Craig Hockenberry: “In summary, we’re very disappointed with how things have turned out. Not because of the funding, but because there’s some potential here that will never be realized. We’ll continue to add things we need for our own products, but don’t expect to see any documentation or bug fixes that don’t affect our own code. Any changes or fixes will get pushed out to the community on a schedule that suits us best: probably at the end of minor release cycles (every few months.)”
If you’re an iOS developer you probably know who Craig Hockenberry is, he’s the guy that created Twitterrific. Anywho, he’s also a Principal at Iconfactory. I guess my point is the guy has been developing software for a very long time and is well respected. I do find it odd that he’s a bit disappointed in the response to Chameleon. I’m not sure what was expected? Open Source is by nature fickle. What I see is this; people will download it, use it, gripe about bugs, but do nothing beyond that. Sure, there will be diehards that get behind it and contribute, but mostly people will just pull the source down, build, and use it. That’s the way it goes in the Open Source community. I have a couple of Open Source things, granted they’re nothing special, and I doubt anyone has used them, but I never expected anyone to contribute to them, or give me money to support them. I don’t want to sound like an ungrateful person, but I don’t think you should expect to receive any money for an Open Source project. It’s icing on the cake if you could raise money to support it, but I wouldn’t expect it.
Anyway, if you’re an iOS or Mac developer you should take a look at Chameleon, and support it in any way you can, the fine folks at the Iconfactory put a lot of time and money into it.
You can donate to the effort right from the homepage.
Gowalla: “Gowalla 3 for Android is a completely new vision of using Gowalla. While it features many of the things that people love about its iPhone counterpart, we wanted to make the Android version something both uniquely Gowalla and uniquely Android. Every screen has been rethought and reworked. No stone was left unturned.”
It looks like the boys and girls from Texas took a page from their iOS playbook and ran with it. The result, a beautiful mobile application for Android.
Well done.
Mashable: “Day two for Instagram was an exciting one. Krieger called his dedicated server representative to inquire about getting a new machine — he was quoted a two day turnaround. Instagram, already fast-approaching 40,000 users, would need something much sooner to meet the weekend demand. “We needed to be on a platform where we could adjust in minutes, not days,†says Krieger.”
Amazon EC2 to the rescue! I hear story after story like this. With Amazon EC2, Rackspace, and Microsoft Azure I’m not sure why you’d want to deal with hosting your own mess. Let them do it for you.
Wil Shipley: “If you farm, you’ll have to purchase seed up-front, and work on it for a season before you see any profits. And every season you’ll plow most the profits (literally) back into the land and salaries and your mortgage. You husband the soil to ensure that it’ll keep providing for you for years and years. If you’re lucky, and if you do a good job, you’ll gather a following, sales will increase, and eventually you may make a tidy living. But every season, no matter how rich you get, you’re going to be back out there, breaking your back and working with the soil. When you finally retire, if you’ve done a good job, the soil is as good as when you first got it, and your farm will live on.”
A great piece on nurturing software. Great software takes care and feeding, Wil is a great software developer, and continually turns the virtual soil of Delicious Library.
Take a few minutes to read the article, you’ll enjoy it.
Gus Mueller: “The idea being that I call multiple operations in quick succession (from JSTalk) and then test each of those undos and make sure the state is exactly what it should be. I recently came across an instance where I needed to do the same thing in Objective-C code, so I thought I’d share with my fair readers the solution I came up with (experienced Obj-C coders will probably know right away what the solution is).”
AKA – Fun with blocks.
Bloomberg: “Expertise in cloud computing, mobile software applications and energy management are in demand in the Motor City as automakers replace car stereos with Internet radio and gasoline engines with motors powered by lithium-ion batteries. Technology job postings in the Detroit area doubled last year, making it the fastest-expanding region in the country, according to Dice Holdings Inc. (DHX), a job-listing website.”
This is not something I expected to see, ever. Detroit reaching out to software engineers, building cloud services, and mobile software.
Since the last Detroit post was a bummer, I thought I’d post something positive to even things out.
Chameleon: “If you’re an iOS developer, you’re already familiar with UIKit, the framework used to create apps for the iPhone, iPod and iPad. Chameleon is a drop in replacement for UIKit that runs on Mac OS X. In many cases, your iOS code doesn’t need to change at all in order to run on a Mac.”
BRAVO IconFactory!
My wife already said no to a $250.00 T-shirt. Darn.