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Kids are Home

Updated 03/18/2020 If you are fortunate enough to be able to work from home during the current crisis, your kids may also be home with you. We've been figuring out a handoff schedule, what hours to work; very early and late as needed, and what activities to do with the boys. Ours are 4 and 2. I understand we've very privileged to be in this position but I hope this list of links helps anyone else looking for activities to do Activities 40+ Best Indoor Activities from Busy Toddler (Busy Toddler) ABC Mouse (e…

Small Wins

Great short read. Remember to value the little wins. Not just the big ones ​ I've missed out on a lot of moments where I could've been celebrating but my brain had already moved on. ​ It's way too easy to forget the hundreds of small things which go right. ​ Celebrate your progress, no matter how small. Don't rob yourself of the collective joy of each of those wins. Enjoy the ride. Work hard, knowing the only reward may be the knowledge of a job well-done, but by celebrating the small wins along the way…

Jackedcast - Ep038 - Transformations With Timothy Broder

The Big Discussion Transformations with special guest Timothy Broder Episode Links Keto in a nutshell Reddit Keto FAQ Reddit KetoGains FAQ KetoGains macro calculator KetoGains Suggested supplements that work well with all ketogenic diets (SKD, TKD, CKD) KetoGains must have supplements Tim’s Gummy Bears FatHead Pizza Keto Chow Tim’s favorite recipes Tim’s favorite recipe sites Keto Connect Ruled.me Tim’s old bio from CrossfitNYC

My Favorite Keto Recipes

As mentioned on my guest appearance on The JackedCast Episode 38 Updated: 08/24/2018 Links Almond Ricotta Cookies Asian Noodle Bowl Blueberry Cheesecake Smoothie Blueberry Muffins Buffalo Chicken Empanadas Bulletproof Bread Cauliflower Alla Vodka Cheese Crackers Cheesy Garlic Bread Cheesy Taco Casserole Chili w/Bacon Coconut Flour Flatbread Fat Head Pizze - The Holy Grail Fried Pasta Gingerbread Cake Gyros Jalapeno Popper Fat Bombs Mason Jar Ice Cream Mozzarella Sticks Pork Rind Pancakes Slow Cooker Pulled…

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep041 - Noise Reduction

The Big Discussion Eliminating the Noise & Getting Productive Best Environment for Productivity Maximizing Your Energy & Time Multitasking vs. Single-tasking Notification Settings Do Not Disturb Settings Screen Time Goals Home Screen Setup ​

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep040 - Wwdc Recap

iLikes/iDislike Clay: Siri Shorcuts, Walkie Talkie, Dark Mode on macOS Jerry - WatchOS 5, Siri Shortcuts Tim: iLike - Shortcuts hopefully having access to bluetooth, Dark mode iDislike - walkie talkie, pushing kids to play with AR instead of real toys, siri raise to speak on the watch Bantha Fodder What could you have done without? Clay: AR Demos (not that into it), Pride band & watch face Jerry: MeMoji Tim: Leaning heavily on what they announced last year to pad time & the Adobe CTO Read the full show…

/2018/03/heymamma-2

I join my wife for a special episode of her podcast, Heymama Laura is joined by her husband Tim this week for a show about life with two kids. They discuss their evolving nighttime routine, why the weekends are hard, and just in general: life with two kids is not relaxing. ​

Omni Roadmap 2018 - The Omni Group

I amy very, very excited about this OmniFocus 3 news. I’ve been using Due for daily tasks and it will be great to go back to just 1 app. My highlights: The term that makes more intuitive sense to most people is tags: you can tag an item with a tag—or multiple tags—and later you can look at that tag to see all the items assigned to it. ​ Tags are incredibly flexible, letting you organize things in whatever ways make the most sense to you. ​ OmniFocus 3 solves this issue by letting each tag track its own…

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep034 - Our Favorite Things Of 2017

The Big Discussion 2017 Favorites Favorite Device: Jerry: iPhone X Tim: Abstain (only new device was iPhone 8) Clay: iPhone X Favorite Accessory: Jerry: Bose Soundsport Free Clay: AirPods Favorite New Software Feature: Jerry: Multitasking on iPad Pro Tim: Flashlight mode on Watch Clay: Swipe Gesture Navigation on iPhone X Favorite Productivity App: Jerry: 1Password Tim: Due Clay: Newton Mail Favorite Social Network App: Jerry: Tweetbot Tim: Narwhal (Reddit) Clay: Twitterrific Favorite Game: Jerry: N/A Tim…

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep033 - Watching Forward

The Big Discussion watchOS 4 My take on my Apple Watch Edition Series 3 with LTE How has watchOS 4 changed how we use our Apple Watch? What does the future hold for the Apple Watch? Could it become a primary device in the future? And what changes need to be made and what features need to be added for that to become a possibility? Revisiting the Dock: The apps that have earned their place How is the Series 0 handling it? Our recommendation to listeners who are on the fence about a purchase? ​

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep032 -Mixed Emotions On Ios 11

The Big Discussion How iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra can make us more productive Our take on the latest builds. Favorite new iOS features Favorite app updates that take advantage of the new APIs? What software changes we don’t like? Where do we go from here? Jedi Weapons of Choice (apps or features) Clay - new device setup method, drag & drop Jerry - iOS miscellaneous- new Screen shots, screen recording, Notes PDF capture.. Tim - Siri for todos -> Omnifocus ​

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep031 - An Array Of Topics

The Big Discussion Follow-up (Tim) Vacation Home screen (Tim) Notability at a Work Conference (Jerry) Goal & Habit Tracking (Clay) ​

Fuze Code Studio Will Let Kids Use The Switch To Code Their Own Switch Games

Amazing Of the hundreds of noble efforts to teach kids to code, Fuze is one of them. Fuze has created its own programming language, Fuze BASIC, a riff on the classic BASIC programming language that was the foundation of Microsoft as a company and a formative experience for anyone who typed a program into an Apple II or Commodore 64. And now Fuze BASIC is coming to the Switch. ​

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep030 - Health Tracking — Gtdjedi Podcast - The Tekside Network — Overcast

The Big Discussion Apps We Use for Monitoring Our Health Fitness Nutrition Special Needs Mental Health Lifestyle Jedi Weapons of Choice Clay - Health Kit, AutoSleep, Headspace, Lose It!, Peak Jerry - OneTouch Reveal, Health Kit, Power Sync Tim - Runkeeper, Beyond the Whiteboard, My Fitness Pal, Sleep Pulse 2, Sleep++, Zero, HealthKit, Headspace ​

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep029 - Let'S Talk Sherlock

The Big Discussion With WWDC behind us, the GTDJedi Council examines which categories of 3rd party apps may have been “sherlocked”. ​

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep027 - Device-Wise

The Big Discussion Device Cycles (How long do we hold onto our devices? Laptops/Desktops Tablets Phones Watches Cost vs. Features: How do you know when it is the right time to make a purchase? Do you buy refurbished? The pros and cons? How to maximize the life out of your devices? Payment plan vs. outright purchase? Which is best for you? Best way to get rid of your old device? ​

Sensegrow PivotalTracker case study

For example, you should prioritize and select features based on an evaluation matrix and not just on the whims and fancies of individuals or customers. Preach 🙏 ​

The best iPhone case I've ever owned

Thank you, Jerry The Sheath, the case is a svelte .90mm thick, full coverage case. Caudabe calls the material ShockLite, a soft gel-like flexible polymer with shock protection. The Caudabe Sheath, on my iPhone 7+, is the best case I've ever used. I need a case. I drop my phone on a weekly basis and I'm nitpicky. Apple's silicon grips my pocket too much. The leather feels weird when I sweat running. Bumpers are too wide. Other 3rd party cases don't stay on as well This case nails it all: It feels great in my…

Adding Smart Speed to any audio file with Audacity

The Overcast podcast app by Marco Arment has a killer feature called Smart Speed and it has ruined all audio listening for me outside of the app. Smart Speed dynamically shortens silences in talk shows; it saves you time, and makes them feel tighter and more produced. I wish I had it everywhere. Tekside is a podcast network I'm part of, and while some of our shows are heavily edited, many are not. While doing some audio work for something else, my wife noticed that Audacity (cross platform) has a crud…

Remembering All Those Helpful Stackoverflow Posts

How often has this happened to you? 2 years ago You are spelunking on Google and StackOverflow (SO). You find what you need. You graciously upvote and/or leave a comment. You update your code and leave a comment. You move on Now You come across the same problem. You remember finding it before. But it's a different job or project. Spelunking begins! You look through your bookmarks You try to remember how you Googled for it the last time You eventually find it after an hour You move on This possibly happens…

Laravel 5.4 – Higher Order Messaging For Collections

Two words: HELL, YES The best way of showcasing this new feature is through code samples. Pretend you have a collection and you want to perform an operation on each of the items: With this new feature you will be able to simplify this into: via Laravel News

Using iOS 10 devices with Xcode 7

Peter Steinberger started a GREAT gist on Using Xcode 7.3.1 and iOS 10 devices. Below is what worked for me to get a few extra test devices (my carry phone runs the 10 beta) working with Xcode 7. Can't upgrade to 8 just yet. Working with a contractor and don't want to move too many pieces. My Setup Xcode 7.3.1 and Beta 6 iOS 10 beta 6 (Beta 7 is out, after getting this to work, I don't think I'm upgrading just yet) Steps iPhone: Settings > General > Reset > Network Settings Reboot iPhone (after it wakes…

How To Give Your Brain A Vacation

a 2011 UC study revealed that we take in the about 174 newspapers’ worth of information daily 😳😳😳 Click through for some great tips ​

Metallica’S New Song Is Their Ballsiest In Decades

The metal-heads who thought Metallica had turned into tired old wussies should sit down and shut up for three minutes, because the quartet is back with a new song that ranks as its best work in decades. ​"Hell Yeah" Metallica has been my favorite band since middle school. Their discography playlist is constantly played on Spotify. Since S&M, their work has been lack-luster. I've listened to it in the hopes it will be good. It never is. After listening to this teaser song, I am VERY, VERY, excited. It's…

Opening iTerm2 Tabs at Specific Directories

I love iTerm2. I can customize the stock Terminal.app just about as much, but it's much easier in iTerm. I find myself always opening the same 3 or 4 tabs when I get into coding mode. Luckily iTerm2 has great scripting support The 4 tabs I always open for Kidfund are: Our iOS project Our Laravel project. Usually where I run artisan commands Our Laravel project; Tails most recent file in the log directory Our Laravel project; I jump around from here. Usually CD-ing to 1. the realm directory to pop it into…

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep018 - Dock Worthy Watch Apps

The Big Discussion 6 Dock Worthy watchOS apps Clay Reminders Drafts 2Do Fantastical Overcast Workflow Jerry Reminders Alarm.com MLB At Bat Automatic 1Password Now Playing Tim Now playing Workout Omnifocus 2 Quick Switch Runkeeper (future) ​

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep017 - Automation Faves

GTDJedi Show Notes Episode #: 17 Date: 06/21/16 Hosts: Clay Russell, Jerry Goldbaum & Timothy Broder The Big Discussion Top 5 Launch Center Pro & Workflow Use Cases ​

Hey Mama! Podcast

We bring our husbands on to discuss #fatherhood, have them share their #igotthis and #idontgotthis moments since becoming dads, and they make recommendations on apps, books and more for soon-to-be or new dads. We tell stories about their early parenting days and as usual, talk about our weeks. I joined the Hey Mama! podcast for a very special Father's Day episode. Check it out!

App Launching On Apple Watch

I love using the Stopwatch and Timer apps while I'm cooking or brewing coffee, but I don't want their complications visible during the rest of the day. The ability to swipe left and bring up an entire watch face devoted to them and any other complications relevant to cooking is a game changer for me. I'll keep my existing primary watch face configured with the date, and a few activity / fitness complications, and I'll also have my Movie watch face with no distractions that Ryan Considine inspired me to use…

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep016 - Custom Keyboard Input

The Big Discussion Custom Keyboards Jedi Weapons of Choice Clay - Gboard, Copied Jerry - Gboard Tim - Gboard, Bitmoji, MS Flow Bantha Fodder (apps deleted from our devices) Jerry - MS Flow Tim - Rock Clock ​

Avoiding Blackberry’S Fate – Marco.Org

The BlackBerry’s success came to an end not because RIM started releasing worse smartphones, but because the new job of the smartphone shifted almost entirely outside of their capabilities, and it was too late to catch u ​ Today, Amazon, Facebook, and Google are placing large bets on advanced AI, ubiquitous assistants, and voice interfaces, hoping that these will become the next thing that our devices are for. If they’re right — and that’s a big “if” — I’m worried for Apple. Marco makes a lot of good points…

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep015 - Notes On Notes

Note Management & Organization What kind of notes go where: images, text, bookmarks, photos? Will we see services eventually go away as native solutions become more complete? The importance of syncing and sharing Note Widgets: Do you use them? Which ones & how? ​

Being A Developer After 40 — Medium

Good #longread for any developer. Regardless of how long you've been doing this Hi everyone, I am a forty-two years old self-taught developer, and this is my story. ​

Presenting Unanticipated Errors To Users

This is the start of a really great series. It uses Swift for the examples but everything in the articles holds true for any language/platform Errors: unexpected, composite, non-pure, external Presenting unanticipated errors to users First, some quick terminology: an error condition is a failed conditional check that results in a function skipping its usual functionality and instead returning an nominated error value. an error is a value used to report that an error condition occurred and normal…

Everything Is Possible But Nothing Is Free

What those asking really want to know, though, is one of two things: Can you just build this thing I want, in addition to all the other things already on your plate, without moving any of your estimates? ​ Is this “easy” to do? ​ Here’s a simpler approach: I would like to have this and I’m willing to pay up to that. ​

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep014 - Getting Social

The Big Discussion Social Networking Which services we use Which services manage which relationships Which services we stay away from What routines are in place that help keep our circles and feeds streamlined What does it take for a social network to have staying power on your devices? Jedi Weapons of Choice Clay - Tweetbot Jerry - Facebook Paper Tim - Cluster ​

Jumping Ship on Basecamp 3

I love Basecamp. I've used it in some shape or form for almost 7 years. I was super excited for Basecamp 3. I wish I could say "It's not you, it's me" but that would be a lie. Basecamp 3 is not ready Does it have bugs? No, none that I've seen. Does it have downtime? No, it's been rock solid. What v3 is missing are some key features found in v2. Ones I didn't realize were missing until I went to use them. I've tried to live without them, or work around them best I can, but I'm done. I started at a new…

How To Set Up An Ios And Android Smart App Banner

Leveraging their link redirect and deep linking expertise, Branch just released a fully customizable, cross-platform, deep linking and tracking smart app banner. It works on all browsers: Safari, Chrome, Firefox, stock browsers and even desktop versions. ​This looks pretty good. Curious how well it will play with JLRoutes

Tektok Podcast - Ep025 - Ocd & The Se

TEK Topics Patrick: iPhone SE What are your thoughts on the iPhone SE, was Apple smart to hold this device out for Spring announcement? Jerry: Smartphone as a primary (and only) computing device? Can your smartphone be your primary (and only) computing device? Tim: Mobile Money How comfortable are you sending money with your phone? (venmo, square cash, FBM, snapchat) How comfortable are you giving these apps your CC or checking account info? Snuck in some discussion about Kidfund ;) Disclosed of course…

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep013 - Default Worthy Apps

GTDJedi Show Notes Episode #: 13 Date: 03/08/16 Hosts: Clay Russell, Jerry Goldbaum & Timothy Broder The Big Discussion Which 3rd party apps have you replaced native apps with? ​

Gtdjedi Podcast - Ep012 - Notification Organization

Hosts: Clay Russell, Jerry Goldbaum & Timothy Broder Jedi Tricks from Around the Web (check out our website for links to all these GTDJedi Tricks) Secret Safari Shortcuts by Rene Ritchie How Email to 2Do Has Improved My Daily Email Workflow by Federico Viticci Ultimate Omnifocus Evernote Integration That Actually Works by Alpha Efficiency How to Master Slack at the Office by Jessica Plautz If you, our listeners, have at trick you would like to share with us, simply tweet us @GTDJedi. The Big Discussion…

Activist Engineering

What matters is that you’re the engineer that’s noticed this capital-B Bad Idea. You know why it’s a problem. This time it’s not just the technical debt or the time it’d take to implement. This idea is bad because it trades a worse product for a better “business”: revenue, eyeballs, impressions, you know the drill. You have a choice in this moment. You can stay quiet and hope it goes away or point it out, question it, and even argue against it ​

Giving Better Code Reviews

Great read. I would have ended up quoting most of it. Enjoy Your team is only as good as your weakest reviewer. ​ Trust no one ​ Giving a valuable code review requires that pull requests are small (<200 lines as a rough gauge) ​

Tektok Podcast - Ep023 - Overly Connected

I had the pleasure of joining the Tektok podcast this week Episode #: 23 Date: 01/25/16 Hosts: Brian Feldhaus,Timothy Broder & Clay Russell TEK Topics Brian: Android in more places. How do you feel about this?? JetBlue entertainment system, Clover payments, etc. Tim: Communication: we are way past email and texting with slack, hangouts, Facebook groups, basecamp, hip chat, etc. What is everyone using to communicate at home and at work? Clay: Getting to Know our Panelists: Name one app, movie, TV show, book…

The Wertzone: A History Of Epic Fantasy - Part 1

Rather than simply throw up my own list (although I may put together a Gratuitous List of such in the coming weeks), I thought it might be more interesting to look at epic fantasy, or at least the modern interpretation of the subgenre, through a chronological perspective. This has the benefit of allowing works to be listed without too much regard for whether they're any "good" or not, but more by their importance in the development of the field. I'm only about 1/4 way through reading this blog series but it…

5 Reasons Why You Should Build A Small Business — Not A Start-Up

The question we ask, whenever we hear about a new business or idea, whether it’s renewable energy or a messaging app or a fucking hamster sled, is this: Will it scale? ​ You Can Focus On Simplicity ​ People Matter More ​

Vagrant 1.8 is out! Linked clones, snapshots, port, ansible and more!

Vagrant 1.8 is out and it's a huge update. My 3 favorite features are below. Click through above for the full list Snapshots are a feature of hypervisors that allow the point-in-time state of a virtual machine to be saved and restored This is awesome. No more copy disks around or worrying you forgot to back up the DB or git stash! New command: port - This will display a list of forwarded ports to the guest machine. This is especially useful if Vagrant is auto-correcting ports in the case of collisions…

Why Quizup Turned The Fastest-Growing Game In History Into A Social Platform

Being data-driven helped grow QuizUp from a hot new game that could acquire users into a social platform that could keep them around. They worked to understand how people were using their app, and what actions lead a user to be retained. Then they worked as a team to develop QuizUp’s social features and solve the second half of the growth formula. In the process, by utilizing usage data throughout the development process, they created the thing that their customers had been telling them they wanted all…

Show & Tell Cast - Ep014 - Star Wars Prequel Trilogy

Star Wars: The Prequel Trilogy Episode I: The Phantom Menace Episode II: Attack of the Clones Episode III: Revenge of the Sith Listen in if you want to hear me intro the show as Jar Jar Binks!

Why 2Do Is My New Favorite Ios Task Manager

Great review of 2Do by Viticci. If I wasn't already so invested in Omnifocus, this looks like it would be perfect. 2Do perfectly adapts to the way I work. This is THE most critical thing when choosing a task manager. Trello still maps 100% to the way I think, but Omnifocus fits seamlessly in with the way I work

New Manager Tools

This article leans slightly towards Technology Management but is applicable across disciplines You've been a great senior resource, you've lead a team or a project, and you've made the decision, along with your manager to transition to some kind of management role. If you are still thinking about it, or wondering what it will be like, start here: This 90-Day Plan Turns Engineers into Remarkable Managers. This article will give you all of the thought starters your need to decide if management is something…

Omnifocus For Mac V2.4 Ready For A Push - The Omni Group

Due Soon also includes a new option—“Today”—which includes only items due before midnight instead of over “the next 24 hours.” I am so happy for this. My most wanted feature. I use a hacky 8pm default time to make "due soon" be "today, sort of, even if I'm working a little late". Now to figure out what my new default time will be! So, over the past few months, we built our own service for Mac to match what Apple’s APN provided us on iOS. This is just impressive

Still Using Feedbin

Feedbin is under continual development and every few of months there's a new feature released or small improvements made to the user-interface. I signed up for Feedbin and Feed Weangler the day they came out. I was a huge Google Reader junkie (and had even written add-on modules for it ). I wanted to make sure I had a great service when it finally shut down. I paid for both services for 2 years to fully try them both out. I've been more than happy with Feedbin. It gets regular updates, is super fast, and…

Five Lesser-Known Features Of Php 7 | Colin O'Dell

With the imminent release of PHP 7 on the horizon, I thought it would be cool to check out some of the lesser-known features coming with the 7.0.0 release ​

Craig Federighi Talks Open Source Swift And What’S Coming In Version 3.0

So many good things happened with Swift and open source today. The project will be hosted on GitHub and will include the compiler, the LLDB debugger, the REPL command-line environment, the standard and core libraries, and code from supporting projects. There is a LOT over on Apple's new GitHub New to Swift (and also open source) is the Swift Package Manager ​ Apple engineers working on Swift will start using the GitHub repos, developing the language out in the open. ​ So instead of getting a big Swift 3.…

Awesome Self Hosted

Great list of self hosted OSS

First Timers Only

A suggestion to Open Source project maintainers The hard part of getting into open source for the first time isn’t the implementation of a feature, but figuring out how to actually contribute code. Great read on setting up your open source project for success as well as making it EASY for people to make their first contribution

Top Four 5: Podcasts

Marco and Tiff rank their four favorite podcasts (right now) ​This episode of Top Four was great. It did NOTHING to help the number of podcasts that I want to listen to. I already listen to a lot so adding would have to mean removing something if it was for my personal queue. ​Luckily, it did give Laura and I some great ideas for shows to listen to together in the car. As we get closer to holiday season and start driving around the northeast, these will be a huge help: ​Undisclosed You Look Nice Today…

Show & Tell - Ep013 - Star Wars Original Trilogy

Star Wars: The Original Trilogy A New Hope! The Empire Strikes Back! Return of the Jedi! This episode was a lot of fun and has a few surprise guests

Science Says Snapchat Makes You Happy

The study, titled “Sharing the small moments: ephemeral social interaction on Snapchat,” concluded that Snapchat interactions are correlated with increased “social enjoyment and positive mood” compared to those on platforms like Facebook. In other words, the quick-fire moments you experience on Snapchat — which is used to share videos and photographs that disappear after a short amount of time — might make you happier than other social media. I need to get better at understanding snapchat. I feel like a…

12 Months of the Show & Tell Podcast

The 12th episode of Show & Tell, my monthly movie podcast came out recently. We've been doing it for a year, and I can't believe I've never mentioned it on this site! The show is hosted by Samuel Strickland, accompanied by myself and Ellyn MaNamara. Each month, we pick a movie that we've each seen before, and bring it to the show to discuss. We chat, rate, review, and once in a while go off the rails. It has been SO much fun working with the crew on the Tekside network, being part of a podcast, and leaning…

Creating a Custom Podcast Feed Using Dropbox and Huffduffer

I use Overcast as my podcast client because of it's SmartSpeed feature. This feature is now 100% free with the new 2.0 update. SmartSpeed has spoiled me. Before Overcast I would listen to most shows at 2x. This resulted in "chipmunk voice" which I dealt with to try to get through a few more episodes each week. Overcast let's me reduce this by speeding up playback by removing a certain % of silence. Sometimes I'll find other recordings, episodes, or files that I want to listen to. I don't want to see if…

A Preview Of What'S New In Basecamp 3

Basecamp 3 is coming and I'm exited. Below are excerpts from Basecamp's preview post on what I'm looking forward to most Basecamp won'€™t send you any emails, push notifications, or in-app notifications if it's outside your specified work hours. Live a little! Work Can Wait until you're back at work. group chat room for quick discussions This is cool but it came a little too late. We've been using slack for project based and individual chat. It has a dedicated app that is easy to cmd+tab to. I see campfire…

Magento 2: Q&A With A Systems Architect

Magento 2 has revamped the architecture of the platform. Many of these changes introduced tried and true design patterns into the platform. Although these design patterns are more advanced, they come with a lot of literature to describe how they should be used in practice (read up on the ‘Gang of Four’). For eCommerce managers, these fundamental changes provide their team with a more structurally sound platform to scale-up their business. ​I am very excited about the direction Magento 2 has taken. It feels…

Workflow 1.3 Brings Powerful Widget, Sync, Health Actions, And More

I’m even more excited about the ability to read and automate Health data in Workflow and combine the results with actions, custom UIs, and other iOS apps. With a new Find Health Samples action, you can read any Health category where samples match filters that include dates, source, name, and value; this allows you to, say, fetch steps for the last month, calories logged by a specific app, or heart rate from your Apple Watch. Each unit can be grouped, sorted, and limited; once fetched from Health, you can…

Adobe Aims To Bring Photoshop To Mobile Masses With Upcoming App - Cnet

Photoshop is so well known that the product name is synonymous with photo editing. But the software itself is a success only on personal computers, not smartphones or tablets. Photoshop's maker, Adobe Systems, hopes that will change in October at its Max conference for developers and creative professionals when it introduces a new Photoshop app for editing photos on Apple's iPhones and iPads initially and Android-powered devices later. The free software, called only Project Rigel for now, is designed to…

Threes’ Free Version Doubles Developers’ Profits

The free version of popular puzzle game Threes has doubled its developers’ profits, as reported by Eurogamer and as Threes developer Asher Vollmer shared in a series of tweets ​

Spotify'S Latest Trick Is A Personalized Weekly Playlist Of Deep Cuts

Spotify says the Discover Weekly playlist is built based on the music that you listen to in addition to what other, similar users have been listening to. It’s designed to surface the lesser-known tracks and deep cuts, as opposed to just being a playlist of the most popular songs out right now. It’s available at the top of each user’s Playlist folder. I'm very, very excited about this. That was one feature I thought Apple Music did well. But, I still love my Spotify. Prior to this, the weekly "for you…

Apiary Releases ‘World'S First’ Automated Api Ci Testing Service - The New Stack

Industrial API Model This reflects Tung’s model which found that in the enterprise, API maturity often begins with an individual use case for an application or workflow which leads to the creation of a specific API within that use case department. But then, over the next six months or so, other parts of the enterprise take similar approaches to pilot projects quickly leading to a chaotic catalog of APIs that have been use-case built without a long term, industrial mindset for the agency’s broader needs…

The Drupal 8 Admin Menu Needs a Fix

I initially wanted to lead with something like “The Drupal 8 Admin Menu Sucks,” but I remember repeated corrections by one my engineering professors that things don’t suck only blow inwardly. ​ I pulled in the WordPress top and left admin menus to a Drupal 8 module and named it WordPress Menu. Nice. Check it out here

How Relay Fm Proves That Podcasts Aren’T An Overnight Success

Just a year later, Relay FM features 16 different shows and delivers 1.5 million episodes every month. A huge congrats to Myke and Stephen. I listen to a lot of the shows on Relay and couldn't be more impressed or happier with the content the network puts out While the number of shows has tripled during Relay FM’s first year, monthly revenue has quadrupled over the same period. ​

Just keep showing up

Just keep showing up Very inspiring article by my friend, Jess

Surviving Anxiety, Or, How I Re-Met Adam Culp Today | Remarks

My running is teaching me two things. One is to “push through” – to go beyond a point when I want to give up short of a goal. The other is to pay attention and take a break when I need it lest I end up hurting myself. ​One day I will write about my anxiety. But not yet I encourage everyone to read Adam’s brief, powerful post. Even if you are not dealing with crushing anxiety, it’s certain that you know someone who is. It’s a terrible thing to experience, and it’s a wonderful thing to be past, though I’m…

Cushion - From Beta To Launch - The Subdomain

When I started Cushion, I knew I wanted to keep the marketing website and the web app separate. I’ve worked on apps in the past where the marketing site is baked into the app code, so any change—even a typo—required a deploy of the entire app. This approach would make me think twice about updating the marketing site—it turned a simple task into a daunting one. Because of this experience, I deliberately separated the two, hosting the marketing site at the root domain while the app lived on a subdomain…

Things I'Ve Quit Doing At My Desk

In reality, we do all sorts of things at our desks that aren’t real work (or affect our ability to produce our best work). ​We do do a lot at our desks. It's interesting though how much of "work" has spilled onto our other devices. At least during the day I'm in outlook and Omnifocus on my phone. When I have 1:1s with my directs, I bring my iPad with Omnifocus to review goals or notes I've kept track of Thinking: Nobody does their best thinking sitting at their desk. I do my best thinking in the shower at…

When Our Blog Became A Business - $2,000 From One Post

If I lacked passion or expertise I think my wife’s readers would be able to see right through it. Readers are smart; they know when you don’t care, and they know when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t fake it. ​Hmm. Should I try a daddy blog? With nerdery, tech, and productivity? It’s tough building your thing online. ​

Gitlab: Almost Everything We Do Will Be Open

Today we’re announcing a move from doing the majority of our development work internally, to almost exclusively working in public issue trackers on GitLab.com. This means that anyone can view and comment on all of our discussion and work. This includes bugs, new features, performance issues and everything else that relates to our products. Awesome. We use Gitlab for our source control at work and I couldn't be happier to see this. We were not working in the open as a true open source project should. ​

Open Sourcing Energy - Artsy Engineering

It’s worth mentioning that we don’t just talk externally about Open Source. Internally, the Mobile team runs talks about Open Source for the rest of the Artsy staff. As well, we discuss the tooling and business implications of having our work in public repos. Artsy strives for an open culture, in this case the development team, on the whole, is just further along in the process. A great read about Artsy's open source culture

Cutting Back

I actually treated a vacation like a vacation but I fully expected to be stuck attending to work, checking RSS, and the like. Turns out it was kind of... nice? I think I'm pretty good about doing this. Work email and calendar are deleted from my phone when I go on vacation. If there is a true emergency, I'll get a text or a phone call. Vacations are important. You need to recharge, you need a mental break. Give your mind some rest. This is especially important from work, but other things as well. On as many…

Invalid predicate when filtering CKRecords by the same keys?

Originally posted on StackOverflow I have a CKRecord type "Follow" which stores the user's ID and the ID of a friend they follow. (Assume that a user can only follow 1 person and the logic around that is handled elsewhere). Screenshot of record definition in CloudKit I want to query the Follow records to confirm that two users follow each other and are in fact, friends. These are the base queries. Each works fine on it's own I want to combine these two predicates and query once, so that if two records come…

World'S Best Whisky Is Being Sent To Age In Space

will send six samples of its whiskies and other alcohols to the International Space Station (ISS) next month, in order to observe the effects of zero-gravity on the aging process. ​ The first samples will return to Earth after one year, while the other group of samples will remain aboard the ISS for at least two years. Unfortunately, there are no plans to sell the drinks once they come back to Earth. Bummer 😕🍹

When To Give Up Trying To Start A New Habit

For me being active is like meditation, a daily ritual that keeps me sane amid the chaos of my life. Without it I feel weak, lethargic and a little depressed. This very much holds true for me. There was a period of time a few months ago where the gym I was going to closed for renovations. I thought I could keep up with my activity at home. I planned on running, doing FitStar or Yoga from my phone, and doing kettle bell work. For the most part I stuck with this. But only in a certain sense. Yes I was going…

Git 2.5, Including Multiple Worktrees And Triangular Workflows

Git 2.5 has been released with worktrees, better triangular workflows, and performance enhancements. Read GitHub's take on it here The new Git subcommand git worktree creates additional working trees connected to an existing Git repository [1]. Each linked working tree is a pseudo-repository with its own checked-out working copy. Its .git is actually a file that refers to the history and references from the main repository Nice. This is Git's solution to having multiple clones for different long running…

How To Remember Tar Flags

how to remember tar flags 🎏 tar -xzf 👈 eXtract Ze Files! tar -czf 👈 Compress Ze Files! via @_tessr

Gigster Does The Dev Dirty Work To Turn Your Idea Into An App

Crew and Toptal pre-vet their freelancers, but all the management issues remain We've had varying levels of success with TopTal. But, the management side of it wasn't the issue. The issue was code quality and expertise. But, we got what we paid for Just go to Gigster’s site, instant message with a sales engineer, tell them what you want built, and in 10 minutes you get a guaranteed quote for what it will cost and how long it will take. Give Gigster the go-ahead, and it will manage an elite set of…

Apple Music Is A Nightmare And I’m Done With It

Jim Dalrymple at The Loop has had some scathing issues with Apple Music. My thoughts below. I love Apple. I love them because they take difficult problems and come up with innovative, simple solutions. The things they make just work and we trust them. Unfortunately, my experience with Apple Music has been exactly the opposite. As of today, I’m missing about 4,700 songs from my library with little hope of getting them back. I had high hopes for Apple Music. I really wanted it to work and become my default…

Sam: Ios Games You Need To Play

I wrote about my favorite games of 2014. Sam posted his list. You should take a look. Sword & Sworcery This is one of my favorite games of all time. It tells a tragic and beautiful story full of fantastical mystery. The world is unlike anything else; creating an amazing blend between high fantasy, music culture, and otherworldly charm. Everything reacts to your touch. It makes you feel like you are a guide and a participant in this story, following the Sythian through her journey as a companion rather than…

Up In The Air: Meet The Man Who Flies Around The World For Free

This was a fascinating read about a quasi-underground culture or gaming airline systems and flying for free. Luxury only: business class and private rooms only “At that point, I was like, ‘Screw it,’ ” he remembers. “I decided I might as well do this full-time.” In April 2014, at the end of his lease, he walked into Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. He hasn’t come down since. ​This article reminded me of the Hitch 50 blog from years ago. Back in 2006, Scotty and Fiddy embarked on an adventure to visit…

Blog Little Things - Coffee Coder

don’t fear to blog little things. It doesn’t need to be big, significant, detailed, mind-blowing to come out but just of a little value. It is helpful to think just of one person who had the exact same problem as yours and was helped by your post. Maybe the post won’t get thousands of shares as we see in our reading list but hey, it saved someone’s time ​

More Quick Blogging Workflows | Manton Reece

We all want to get better at writing and posting more frequently. As I mentioned in yesterday'€™s post, the best way to improve anything is to do more of it, more often 100% agree. Rebuilding my blog was fun. Let's see if I can get myself to write mode ;) I'm also trying a "habit app" a big part of posting regularly is just having a system that makes it easy Amen Posting to a blog first and then Twitter second seems like a simple idea, but it is extremely powerful. Years from now you end up with an archive…

We Need More Bad Ideas

Manton Reece: The essay reminds me of something that always stuck with me reading about legendary Warner Bros. animation director Chuck Jones years ago. He said that when he was young, his father would give him and his siblings essentially unlimited paper to draw on, unused supplies from his business. We all have 100,000 bad drawings in us. The sooner we get through all the bad drawings — in Shawn’s essay, the bad ideas — the sooner we can start producing our best work. Write your ideas down. Good or bad…

Learning from Brent

I learn more about how to think about programming from Brent Simmons' blog than any place I can think of. I wish he wrote books or did full length tutorials. Probably more the later. I really like his thought process and how he breaks problems down. A good follow up to his Swift Protocol issue can be found here by David Owen. I learn a lot from him too Let's say I'€™m writing an RSS reader. (This is the example I tend to use on my blog, for historical reasons, and shouldn't be taken as indicative of…

Open-Sourcing Jewelbots

I’ve always wondered why companies (and individuals) don’t put more of their source code out there

Beyond UXKit - Robert Böhnke

Robert Böhnke wrote a good [piece](http://robb.is/thinking-about/beyond- uxkit/) on what UXKit could mean for the future of iOS/Mac UI Engineering The new Photos for Mac is based on a new private framework in 10.10.3, UXKit. It is essentially a replica of UIKit, based on top of AppKit. He also comments on what something like react native could mean for engineers, and the attitude the community has had around other “non-native” in the past

Equality in the Apple Blogging Scene

Long time Mac developer, Daniel Jalkut posited a question last night on Twitter. I find it far easier to follow brilliant women on Twitter than in blogs. Do women in the Apple scene not blog as much, or am I missing them? — Daniel Jalkut (@danielpunkass) [January 10, 2015](https://twitter.com/danielpunkass/status/553983430095302656) This question came out of some of the responses to Marco Arment’s “hot” post last week about the state of Apple’s software ecosystem. Daniel got a good number of replies. I’m…

My $2375 Amazon EC2 Mistake

A word of warning: Know what your modules/extensions/pods/plugins are doing, especially if they use any of your credentials. I’m actually surprised that this actually was up that long. I accidentally did this once and Amazon was on the phone with me 10 mins later. Turns out through the S3 API you can actually spin up EC2 instances, and my key had been spotted by a bot that continually searches GitHub for API keys. Amazon AWS customer support informed me this happens a lot recently, hackers have created an…

The Programmer's Dream

Great short piece by Nick Bradbury Programmers dream of new code. We spend a good deal of our time working on code we didn’t write for software we didn’t create, much of which we believe is horribly written (or, at least, could be done much better). We dream of a chance to start fresh, working from scratch on a brand new piece of software that will eventually become something someone else has to work on and believes is horribly written. If we’re lucky our software will look pretty solid from the outside. It…

Integrated Automation for iOS 8

I can't wait to play with Workflow more over the holidays “Workflow – first teased by Ari Weinstein and team in January 2014 – takes another approach: instead of relying heavily on a specific functionality (such as text editing) or third-party apps and services (like IFTTT and Dropbox), Workflow is primarily aimed at automating native iOS apps and features. Workflow can automate Calendar events and Reminders, it can parse and extract data from webpages in Safari, and it has full support for Photos and…

Facebook, you creepy piece of sh*t

I debated posting this for a few days. I’m deciding to because when I was googling for something. I found nothing. I hope this helps someone: A lot of people don't talk about this. Some do. Most don't. I'm not sure why. Maybe embarrassment. Maybe fear. Maybe they think they are alone. You aren't. It happens. It's real. I've talked to some people and we aren't alone. Laura and I have been trying to conceive for a bit. I won't go into how long, at least not right now, so don't ask. Talking to some people has…

Twitter is not a replacement for blogs

Too much of my writing in the last few years has gone exclusively into Twitter. I need to find a better balance.

A Tale of Two iPhones: Part 2

My iPhone decision, posted on The Tekside Network Size matters, and it’s all in how you use it. In my last post, I went through my thought process of picking a new phone. Since then, I’ve had a lot more hands on time with the 6 Plus, and came to a decision. Quick recap: Big screens are pretty, big screens are harder to fit in pockets, I read a lot, I should get a big one as a developer device. A coworker of mine has the 6 Plus and was gracious enough to let me use his for some lengths of time. We were both…

My Packing List

I’ve been traveling for work a bit this year.  Sometimes with little notice and it’s helped me to have a go to packing list.  I also use it for personal trips as well. I just need less things.  I was originally managing this in clear. Lately I’ve been managing it in Listacular. I like that this app syncs text file todo lists over dropbox. Easy to update on my Mac. Aftershave Air bed  Ball Bathing suit  Belt Big headphones Boots  Charge ipad  Charge kindle  Charge laptop  Coffee  Deodorant  Dress shirts…

Meet Magento 2014 New York – a Personal Summary

Alan Kent, Chief Architect of Magento 2 has a great write up of Meet Magento NY Tim Broder of Alexander Interactive talked about his use of Vagrant to build standard images, ensuring more consistent development environments for all users. He pointed out you can have a Vagrant container mount a file system from your local laptop so you can use a local IDE while having the files run in a standard Vagrant environment image. In development you may mount it read/write and in production read-only. The idea was to…

A Tale of Two iPhones

I wrote up my thoughts on picking a new phone over on the Tekside Network. It’s almost upgrade time. Normally this is an easy decision: get the new phone. Apple threw us a curve ball this year by launching two entirely new phones. Now every Apple fan has a choice to make and it's a much, much harder choice than the 5s vs. the underpowered 5c last year.  This year’s choice boils down to screen size. Yes, granted, the 6 Plus has better battery life and a better camera. Those two things will influence the…

These are the apps you want to try on your new iPhone

iOS 8 offers a whole range of features that let apps extend themselves — into other apps, and even into widgets inside notification center. This is a great writeup of how exciting things are getting in the ecosystem for both new and old apps alike

The Rise and Fall of Communication Mediums

Brent Simmons: My blog’s older than Twitter and Facebook, and it will outlive them. It has seen Flickr explode and then fade. It’s seen Google Wave and Google Reader come and go, and it’ll still be here as Google Plus fades. When Medium and Tumblr are gone, my blog will be here. The things that will last on the internet are not owned. Plain old websites, blogs, RSS, irc, email. Marco Arment: This is why I’m still championing blogs, RSS, and using your own domain even though supposedly “everyone” has moved…

Don't Skimp on Coffee: A CTO's Plea

My friend Matt, CTO of DoSomething.org, posted a great article on the importance of coffee, ritual, and how they relate to the happiness, productivity, and health of your company If you’re looking for an office Rosetta Stone, a way to assess company culture across industries, coffee is it.

Twitter or RSS

If you had to choose between only reading Twitter or only reading weblogs, which would you choose? Losing Twitter would be a bummer for a lot people, but losing weblogs would decimate the web. We should do more to strengthen weblogs and RSS because they are the foundation for so much of the most important writing on the web. #RSS4LIFE Joking aside, I do get a lot of my news from twitter these days. I would say half the articles that I'd be interested in reading (dumping to Instapaper from Reeder or Mr…

The Most Dangerous Word In Software Development

“Just put it up on a server somewhere.” “Just add a favorite button to the right side of the item.” “Just add [insert complex option here] to the settings screen.” If any of these sentences rings true or makes you cringe, read this article.

Why I turned off email notifications

Just about a week ago I had an epiphany: Email is a constant. It will never end. More often than not nothing is actionable I made a quick change — turn off all notifications for email. None shall pass. NO EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS. I've been doing this for about a year now on my phone and it's amazing. I've been doing it for 3 years on my laptop. I don't know why I didn't do it on all my devices sooner. (I don't get outlook or gmail notifications). It lowers stress and helps me focus on actual tasks instead of…

Coding Under Par

when it’s midnight and I’m on a perceived roll with some coding challenge, there doesn’t appear to be any stopping me. I “have all night,” or at least that’s what my monkey brain says. Of course, the smarter half of me knows I should be getting calling it a day and getting some much-needed rest. I hear this. As I get older, and keep to a rigid sleep schedule, I tend to find myself being useless after 9pm. I do miss the old days io burning through until 2am. Now that flux exists to take care of the circadian…

Apple's Swift Blog

This new blog will bring you a behind-the-scenes look into the design of the Swift language by the engineers who created it, in addition to the latest news and hints to turn you into a productive Swift programmer. I LOVE the new, open-er Apple. From the barriers between iOS and OSX coming down, some Apple devs being more open on twitter and in the dev forums, and now this blog. It’s an amazing time to be using Apple dev tools

On Working From Home and Running a Business

Shawn Blanc talks about how he organizes himself and his company for working from home. One day... I cannot express enough just how absolutely critical it has been to have a budget — both for our company and for our personal household expenses. Did you know that most of America’s millionaires are people who earn low- six-figure incomes? They have a high net worth (between $1 – $10 million) because they live simply and budget their money. When we were saving for the down pay payment on our condo we were…

Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

This is a quite from a Facebook employee: We’re blind. It doesn’t matter what any individual person thinks about something new. Everything must be tested. It’s feature echolocation: we throw out an idea, and when the data comes back we look at the numbers. Whatever goes up, that’s what we do. We are slaves to the numbers. We don’t operate around innovation. We only optimize. We do what goes up. There is a flip side to this too, right? Facebook HAS that kind of data. What I wouldn't DO for that kind of data…

SwiftInFlux

SwiftInFlux, a community-based project for cataloguing the changes that Apple is probably going to make to Swift before 1.0 ships I'm really happy someone is doing this. Even between seeds 1 and 2 there was a number of changes. The differences were buried in the Xcode release notes. I think they deserve their own diffs. If you agree, please file a radar

Don't Be Scared Of Functional Programming

This [article](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/07/02/dont-be-scared-of- functional-programming/) made a LOT of things click for me. I hadn't quite grasped the concepts of functional programming. (I hadn't really tried to). It's a little long. But, worth it. Functional programming can be daunting, but remember that it isn’t only for PhDs, data scientists and architecture astronauts. For most of us, the real benefit of adopting a functional style is that our programs can be broken down into smaller…

Launch Center Pro to Trello via IFTTT

I previously wrote about automating adding to Trello from my phone using Launch Center Pro.  That method involved some scripting and Pythonista. It was fun to figure out, but cumbersome to update. Now that LCP has IFTTT integration, this process can be simplified. You can chain an event from LCP through IFTTT to email a card to Trello. Note: This will only work for 1 list per board. I haven’t figured out if there is a way to email to multiple lists on the same board. Set up the Launch Center Pro channel on…

Delayed Liveblog on the WWDC 2014 Keynote

I was stuck in meetings most of the day but I was able to download the keynote for the train ride home :) Here are some thoughts. If I live tweeted, it probably would have gone something like this. Maybe a few more here.. The dev intro video was awesome. It’s like Apple saying “We love you, we’ve heard you” That’s a lot of Apple engineers present It’s a shame I can’t risk my laptop. I want to play with Yosemite! I dig the new look Ooo dark mode Mail drop is huge for work Airdrop from phone to laptop…

The Old Reader on Good Ol’ RSS

It’s always odd to hear people say RSS is dead. The fact is, RSS is easily the most successful stealth, insurgent technology on the web. It is pervasive and is the engine for much of the Internet. Long live RSS!

Up and Running with MindSea: Doing it the Right Way

I once worked with a company that told me if just two lines of code are repeated, then there’s probably a better abstraction that I should be using instead. A bit extreme, I know, but I took that to heart. I haven’t looked back and that advice has served me well. Ash Furrow talks about the benefits of abstraction and how it can aid in ramp up. A good, short read

Facebook Launches AppLinks To Make Deep Linking Between Apps Easier

So with this new scheme, you just pass the app a web URL and if a compatible mobile app is installed, it will automatically load that app instead of the web version. AppLinks will learn which links are handled by which apps. “We crawl the web for you. You don’t have to do it – but you can, you just don’t have to,” Sukhar said. Developers simply mark up their web pages with a few new meta properties. Facebook also offers a Parse module and an API to support these features. Nice. Not the better inter-app…

How to be an open source gardener

A good read on triaging issues using the Rails project as an example What are Issues? The very first thing your project needs to do is to figure out what Issues are supposed to be for. Each project is different. For example, in Rails, we keep Issues strictly for bugs only. Help questions go to Stack Overflow, and new feature discussion and requests go to the rails-core mailing list. For Rust, we have issues for feature requests, meta-issues… everything. For some repositories, closing all of the issues is…

Ember, iCloud & App Reviews by @dancounsell — Realmac Blog

The worst thing is we can't reply to those users. It makes me sad to see users that are having issues and know that we can help, but yet have no way of contacting them. This is one thing that needs to change on the App Store. I agree. I sometimes have luck with stalking people down on twitter. But, it breaks my heart when I could easily help someone if they have an issue with Weather Notifications

Build 2014

Justin goes over his experience at the Microsoft Build conference this year: With things like C#, the Roslyn compiler/frameworks, and the modern WinRT runtime, it feels like Microsoft is way ahead of Apple in the future looking regard. As a developer, I’m jealous of a lot of the technologies coming out of Microsoft. As a user? They’ve got a long ways to go before I consider using Windows over a Mac. That said, this is the new Microsoft. They don’t need me to use Windows or Windows Phone as long as I use…

“Security”

Were the National Security Agency an agency charged with the security of our nation, it would have reported the Heartbleed bug immediately instead of exploiting it.

NSA Said to Exploit Heartbleed Bug for Years

If an organized hacker ring sabotaged security standards and major tech infrastructure for years, compromising the security of hundreds of millions of people and many governments including our own (and potentially causing billions of dollars in damages when these exploits were found by others), and exploited any flaws they found or created to spy on millions of people in the world including our own citizens, what should they be charged with? Mass criminal sabotage, cybercrime, cyberwarfare, and computer…

Brian on Data Migration

Pretty much any migration can be done without stopping the world. You migrate in steps, with double writes and double reads at some points. Here’s the general outline

Then and Now

inessential.com: Paul’s Talk on Core Data

it’s more that I’m eternally on the fence about Core Data. Brent Simmons goes into a few examples on the mind games you have to play when thinking about Core Data scenarios. We are all pretty wired for relational thinking. More recently we've learned to think more TKTK. Core Data and it's object graph is yet another way of thinking I'm learning Core Data as part of my next app and am enjoying it so far. Eventually I'll be tackling sync. I need to see for myself how bad Coe Data sync is. I've had some…

Begging For App Ratings

John Gruber recently suggested that users who are annoyed by “Please Rate This App” panes should leave one-star reviews. We have a “contact us” menu item under our Help menu, but if users decide to post reviews instead, we cannot provide any tech support. So we also can’t tell the other four people that their crashers should be fixed now, and they should update to the version on our website (or wait for the App Store approval). Apple’s customers are Apple’s customers, except we’re supposed to support them…

inessential.com: Azure Takes Over

There’s still a lot of the old Microsoft there, the Windows, Office, Exchange, and Sharepoint (WOES) company. It’s most of the company by far, surely. (I just made up the acronym WOES. It fits.) Brent Simmons talked a little about the new Microsoft CEO coming from the azure team and what it could mean. I love this acronym.

Tips and Resources for beginning iOS Development

While you are planning and building out your application, think about the user experience and interface a lot. Tweak, try things out, and above all, design something that avoids complexity. If you look at all of the top selling apps, they are the ones that have removed complexity, and distilled down the application idea into its most simplistic form possible while still maintaining a good range of functionality. There's a fine line begin being simple and being useless, and it's up to you to find that line…

Quote of the day by David of 37signals

“But what’s the harm in over-testing, Phil, don’t you want your code to be safe? If we catch just one bug from entering production, isn’t it worth it?”. Fuck no it ain’t, and don’t call me Phil. This line of argument is how we got the TSA, and how they squandered billions fondling balls and confiscating nail clippers.

ReadKit article sorting: group by feed in Feed Wrangler smart streams

I upgraded to Version 2.4 of ReadKit the other day and found my new feeds—the ones in the RSS News smart folder—in reverse chronological order. I could’ve sworn I had them set up the other way in 2.3, so I hunted for a way to switch the ordering around. It’s not in the or under the menu. You have to right-click on the RSS News item in the left panel and choose from the popup menu. That brings up a sheet where you can set the ordering. Thank god. This was driving me nuts.

Automating Layouts Bring Flipboard’s Magazine Style To Web And Windows

We automate the whole process of layout design and editing by slotting your content into custom-designed page layouts — like fitting puzzle pieces together. We start with a set of page layouts created by human designers. Then our layout engine figures out how to best fit your content into these layouts, considering things like page density, pacing, rhythm, image crop and scale. In many ways, that is the key to Flipboard’s signature look and feel: at its heart are the work of real designers. I've worked on…

How I use my Launch Center Pro homescreen

Recently there have been a few Launch Center Pro articles that have recaptured my attention. I had tried a few months ago to simplify my home screen, no luck. This time, it's sticking. A few people have asked me on twitter what flows I use in LCP so I'm throwing this post together. Please note my screens are very much a work in progress. There are some Actions in multiple groups, as well as on the home screen. I also just noticed I'm missing a browser. A lot of these are app launches instead of true…

Quote of the week: Brent Simmons on terrible things

I have to design as if terrible things could happen — because by doing so I can better prevent terrible things from happening. via inessential.com: Vesper Sync Diary #8 - The Problem of Unique IDs.

Expansion Followed By Consolidation

David Smith: I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if the pressures of remaining a small, independent fish in this Big Fish Pond became untenable or undesirable at some point. :-/ That's a shame. Indie is something that's been on my mind to see of it was possible. We will see what happens over the next year for me as well

House of Cards regex mute filter for Tweetbot

Some regular expressions if you don't want to see spoilers in your timeline Just the show name. tweetbot:///mute/keyword?regex=1&text=(%3Fi)%23%3Fhouse(%20%3Fof)%3F(%3F%3D%20%3Fcards) @housecards #houseofcards #housecards House of Cards House cards house cards Includes some cast member names and character names: tweetbot:///mute/keyword?regex=1&text=(%3Fi)%23%3Fhouse(%20%3Fof)%3F(%3F%3D%20%3Fcards)%7C(%3Fi)%23%3Fkevin(%3F%3D%20%3Fspacey)%7C(%3Fi)%23%3FFrancis(%3F%3D%20%3FUnderwood)%7C(%3Fi)%23%3FRobin(%3F…

Background fetch: An Unexpected Botnet

When enabled within your applications you are essentially building a massively distributed botnet. Each copy of your application will be periodically awoken and sent on a mission to seek and assimilate internet content with only the OS safeguards holding it back. As your app grows in popularity this can lead to some rather significant increases in activity. David Smith's article on the implications (and related cost) of background fetch gave me a few things to think about. I have a few parts of my new app…

Quote of the Day: Marco Arment

“Emphasizing and rewarding length over quality results in worse writing and more reader abandonment.” – Marco Arment

Interesting Lessons from Building a Pedometer - David Smith

It is a rare thing for a software developer to know that what I’m building is tangibly improving the health and lives of my customers. Such an awesome feeling. I can only hope my next app helps improve someone. This one won't help their health, but hopefully other parts of their life.

Hypercritical: The Road to Geekdom

Geekdom is not a club; it’s a destination, open to anyone who wants to put in the time and effort to travel there. And if someone lacks the opportunity to get there, we geeks should help in any way we can. Take a new friend to a meetup or convention. Donate your old games, movies, comics, and toys. Be welcoming. Sharing your enthusiasm is part of being a geek. Anyone trying to purposely erect border fences or demanding to see ID upon entry to the land of Geekdom is missing the point. They have no power over…

How I lost my $50,000 Twitter username

I had a rare Twitter username, @N. Yep, just one letter. I’ve been offered as much as $50,000 for it. People have tried to steal it. Password reset instructions are a regular sight in my e-mail inbox. As of today, I no longer control @N. I was extorted into giving it up. Another reason I am quite happy I recently moved all if my domains from godaddy to hover. (They even took my godaddy login and did it all for me). I'd like to cancel paypal but I just can't bring myself to do it

Google Bringing Chrome Apps to iOS and Android

Google today launched Chrome apps for iOS and Android, which will see Chrome-based apps encased in a native application shell that allows them to be distributed through the Apple App Store and Google Play. Currently, Chrome- packaged apps are written in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, but are able to launch outside the browser, access APIs and work offline. I feel like this should just be called "yet another cross platform mobile solution." I'd like to say this will be crisp, feel native, actually work, or gain…

Motivation — Sam Soffes

This hit pretty home for me. I have motivation problems sometimes. Sometimes the TV just looks SO good. Motivation — Sam Soffes: "My friend has a great saying: I want to program wet and naked. — Ernie Miller I love this. He was talking about getting ideas in the shower and getting so excited that you get out and start programming before you can even dry off."

Weather Notifications on Lifehacker!

OMG. I’m on lifehacker. [Weather Notifications Gives You a Forecast without Opening the App](http://lifehacker.com/weather-notifications-gives-you-a-forecast-without-open-1458155902): "iPhone: One of the problems with weather apps on the iPhone is that you have to actually open them to get the information you want. Weather Notifications is an app that'll send customized notifications to your lock screen for only the information you care about. At a glance, Weather Notifications isn't that different from the…

Why Android First is a Myth | steve cheney – technology, business & strategy

This article made me think back to when I switch to iOS to make apps. (I was a hardcore android proponent in general and at work).  I’m happy to have other validation with my choice [Why Android First is a Myth | steve cheney – technology, business & strategy](http://stevecheney.com/why-android-first-is-a-myth/): In mobile, particularly in consumer markets, there has been an ongoing debate about when or if Android will become the first platform that sophisticated startups develop for. Often times, this…

GarageBand for iOS 7 to Become Free with In-App Purchases as Apple Reveals Full Set of New iLife and iWork Icons - Mac Rumors

With all the discussion around pricing the past few weeks, it's very interesting that Apple is using a IAP model in one of it's apps GarageBand for iOS 7 to Become Free with In-App Purchases as Apple Reveals Full Set of New iLife and iWork Icons - Mac Rumors: Aside from the new icons, the updated page also reveals in a footnote that GarageBand will become a free basic download for all iOS 7 devices, joining the other five iLife and iWork apps that became free alongside the release of iOS 7. GarageBand will…

inessential.com: Why Care About 30,000 Notes?

Brent Simmons posts some interesting philosophy on sample data sizes. I'm definitely going to be using this thinking in my next app I’ve learned that I’m unlikely to over-estimate the amount of data people like to keep. via inessential.com: Why Care About 30,000 Notes?.

Gamasutra: David Framptons Blog - Postmortem: The Blockheads

The Blockheads is an extremely popular (and profitable) game. David Frampton does a great Post Mortem write up of what went right and wrong: The Blockheads is an exploration/mining/crafting massive world sandbox game released for iOS in January 2013 and only just launched for Android. To date it has had over 7 million downloads on iOS, and has a passionate and growing fan-base, rarely dipping below 100,000 daily active users since its launch 9 months ago. The Blockheads was entirely made by one guy - me…

Why We Do What We Do

In his talk at Smashing Conf in Freiburg Germany 2013 Dan Rubin talked about the impact of motivation on our work. Here are some notes from his talk Why We Do What We Do: via Smashing Conf: Why We Do What We Do.

Why Git?

A few months ago I gave a presentation at work about why we moved from SVN to distributed source and git. Totally forgot to put it in a post here. I also had a lot of fun playing with [reveal.js](http://broderboy.github.com/git- presentation/) for the slides and setting up github pages. I cover the following: What is traditional source control? How does distributed differ? Why Git? Git at Ai Check out the slides here

Citrix CCA Exam for Windows 2003 Server and XenApp

Through the successful completion of the Citrix CCA XenApp Windows Server 2003 exam (1Y0-A23 exam) you can achieve validation of your administration skills with the achievement of a Citrix Certified Administrator (CCA) certification. This exam is the only requirement for achieving the certification, which is a valuable credential to obtain in the IT industry. As more and more enterprises across all sectors or the market utilize Citrix platforms, the XenApp 1Y0-A23 exam is a positive step in your…

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Wolverine? Or 2 Batmen?

![](http://www.igeektrooper.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/02/wolverinebatmen.jpg)

Twitter recap of the superbowl halftime show

Ok so, the superbowl halftime was just god awful @tomkaters I just put Prince on the turntable. #MakeMyOwnHalftimeShow @cskilpatrick This halftime show needs more Bieber. #superbowl @CobraCommander Who is this tranny singer butchering Guns at halftime? @iamunscared Fergie is a train wreck, just ruined G n R. @amyasparklethe sound from the halftime show is completely messed up. awful. @garyvee No more pls @tomkaters Enjoy halftime by tom. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP48M2BEs0 @cskilpatrick They should…

My picks for the 2011 Oscars

Best Supporting Actress Amy Adams, The Fighter Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech Melissa Leo, The Fighter Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit Jackie Weaver, The Animal Kingdom This was close between Steinfeld and Leo Best Supporting Actor Christian Bale, The Fighter John Hawkes, Winter's Bone Jeremy Renner, The Town Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech As much as I loved the town, not even close_ _ Best Actress Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole…

oh amazon

(10:18:07 AM) Laura: I think you ordered two plastic ball and chaisn (10:18:10AM) Laura: chains (10:18:20 AM) Me: i did (10:18:22 AM) Laura: Oh (10:18:24AM) Laura: Why? (10:18:35 AM) Me: i got enough bachelor parties coming up where i'll use it (10:18:39 AM) Laura: Ah (10:18:43 AM) Laura: Cool

Huge omelet after OPT

![image](/images/2010/10/wpid- IMG_20101002_113547.jpg) James OPT Fitzgerald came to the black box yesterday which was a lot of fun. Needed a huge omelet after.

Pig Roast

Had a great time at Crossfit Virtuosity's anniversary pig roast this past weekend. mmmm pig

Wedding Planning

Tim: aside from not being a buffet, the food looks redic Tim: also, they are using joomla for their site via maybe-not.

Hide buzz without disabling it

If you want people to see your buzzes, but like myself want to keep checking people's google reader shares IN google reader, and see twitter in twitter, you can hide the Buzz label. Go into settings > labels > buzz > hide

Why Google Needs Buzz

Why Google Needs Buzz: " [![](https://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/krose?i=Ma- a6KVRROg:XtH5NORu2hI:V_sGLiPBpWU)](https://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/krose?a =Ma-a6KVRROg:XtH5NORu2hI:V_sGLiPBpWU) [![](https://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/k rose?d=7Q72WNTAKBA)](https://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/krose?a=Ma- a6KVRROg:XtH5NORu2hI:7Q72WNTAKBA) [![](https://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/krose ?d=qj6IDK7rITs)](https://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/krose?a=Ma- a6KVRROg:XtH5NORu2hI:qj6IDK7rITs) [![](https://feeds.feedburner…

Google Buzz? Facebook Email?

Google Buzz quetly came out, adds friendfeed like functionality to gmail Facebook is also launching email, interesting times ahead in the communication world.

Django Admin inline preview

Update: This code lives on Github To get inline Admin Previews in the list view Inherit from PreviewAdmin in your ModelAdmin In your model's template directory, create a folder called preview, and create a template for that model's preview Example for model Article then edit Whatever is in article.html will be shown inline Access your Article object through {{ object }} in the template

Get the admin url for a django model

Add this to your model to be able to get their admin change link from anywhere Useful if you want to jump to the admin screen of an object you are looking at on the front end

Remaining character count in django admin

Update: This code also lives on Github Want to display the remaining characters on a text field in admin? (based off of maxlength or an override)

Override QuerySet.delete() (one way of preventing cascading deletes)

We needed to override the default QuerySet delete function to deal with a client problem that we were facing Yes This is monkey-patching, and probably bad practice but if anyone needs to conditionally override the cascading delete that django does at the application level from a queryset, this is how to do it

Django gets Multi-DB

For his Google Summer of Code project Alex Gaynor added Multiple Database support to Django, which just got pushed to Trunk. The Documentation is available here. Some of the offhand benifits I can see: Multiple of databases. Got some legacy systems you don't want to migrate but have access to the data? no problem Have a read and a write database. Want one of your databases to speed up by configuring faster indexes and disabling writes? done. Multiple TYPES of databases. This is the one I'm most excited…

Share Google Reader folders with friends

A quick rundown on how to share whole folders with friends so they can see what you are reading, there might be an easier way to do this but this was the quickest I found Click explore click "View all recommendations" click Browse click Create a bundle Fill out the form and drag folders or individual feeds. After this is done you can email the bundle to your friends

Sneak some advanced logic into a Django template

I was adding on an app to a Django project at work where I was overriding an existing template but did not have access to the view that called that template. I was left in a scenario where I had the variables that the view was originally set up with, but non of the new models that I had added. In a filter you can do whatever logic you want, and then pass information back to the view. Please keep in mind, this is probably a horrible practice, but it does have its uses. In this specific scenario I needed to…

We fix while we eat

Hey, thats me! [We fix while we eat](https://www.alexanderinteractive.com/blog/2009/12/we-fix- while-we-eat.html): " Ai's David Napolitan and Tim Broder fix a late night production bug

Google Wave Invites

I have quite a few Google Wave invites left, if you would like one email me, @broderboy me, or leave a comment below. In all cases, please leave the email address to send the invite to.

Take your batch into the cloud

From the work blog: Take your batch into the cloud: " About a year ago I wrote a webapp called twitter2gtalk, which simply takes your latest Twitter message and sets it as your Google Talk Status. Shortly there after I attended an App Engine Hackathon (GAE) at Google NYC. At the hackathon, I started porting the app over to app engine. At the time, there was no scheduling or cron support in GAE. I created a hybrid app running between GAE and my webfaction server. My webfaction server would handle the cron…

Online advertising moving to.... your car?

Another one of mine on the work blog - Online advertising moving to.... your car?: With the release of [Android 2.0](http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.0-highlights.html) on the Motorola [Droid](http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and- Services/Mobile-Phones/Motorola-DROID-US-EN), the Google Maps for Mobile application brings turn by turn GPS navigation (with voice) to your car. A great feature by far, it actually made Garmin and TomTom's stocks [tank](http: //www.wiseandroid…

Google’s Christmas gift to America is free Wi-Fi at airports starting today (reblog)

Google’s Christmas gift to America is free Wi-Fi at airports starting today: google-xmas-wifi Those that hate Google but travel frequently might feel a bit conflicted over the next couple of months because of Google’s holiday gift to America. Starting today and ending on January 15th, Google will be offering up free, no strings attached Wi-Fi at 47 airports while Virgin American flyers will be getting free in-flight Wi-Fi as of the 18th. The In addition to this, Google has set up a way for travelers at each…

Google Wave as a Project Collaboration Tool

I'm a'bloggin on the company blog! (Alexander Interactive) Google Wave as a Project Collaboration Tool: If you aren't already familiar with Google Wave, check out some basic info, and a very in-depth video here. Wave is a new project from Google that reinvents email communication. Forget everything you know about email, it was invented back in the 70's, things have changed; technology is faster, we have cloud computing, web apps look fancier, and for a while, a large portion of email users are moving (back…

Use Google Voice with your existing number

WOOHOO!!!! It's working on my verizon blackberry! "Up until now, if you wanted to use Google Voice, you needed to choose a new number (a "Google number"). Taking calls through your Google number allows us to offer features like call recording, call screening and getting text messages via email. But we know not everyone wants to switch to a new phone number, so it made sense for us to create a lighter version of Google Voice for people who are willing to trade some features for the ability to use their…

Google Wave checker for firefox

I'm liking google wave so far (not loving yet, but there aren't that many people on it yet), but one of the annoying things was actually having to be in the app to see if I have new waves. Firefox plugin, problem solved!

Firefox Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts

Here is a list of Firefox keyboard and mouse shortcuts for each of the three major operating systems organized by topic.

Checking if a remote file exists in python

Normally, to check if a remote web file exists I would use urllib's getcode() but that is a 2.6 and newer feature. In Python 2.5 its a little more interesting. Thankfully, wget's spider command can help us out.

Twitter get phone calls, Facebook gets voice chat

Twitter users on Thursday will, for the first time, be able to make voice calls directly to each other through the microblogging service. Look out, Facebook users: Here comes voice chat. Sometime in the next few weeks, the social network's tens of millions of users will begin to be able to have high-quality voice conversations, even as its third-party developers are able to start including voice in their applications.

Fight Gone Bad IV

Anyone want to help me out by donating? Fight Gone Bad IV: On Sept 26th I am competing in Fight Gone Bad IV to raise money for Wounded Warriors and Athletes for a cure.  Fight gone bad is a CrossFit workout scored by the number of reps. Description from the CrossFit website 4.3. Explain Fight Gone Bad In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute. This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. We’ve used this in 3 and 5 round versions. The…

Location, Location, Location

This will be pretty cool when it comes out Location, Location, Location: "Twitter platform developers have been doing innovative work with location for some time despite having access to only a rudimentary level of API support. Most of the location-based projects we see are built using the simple, account-level location field folks can fill out as part of their profile. Since anything can be written in this field, it's interesting but not very dependable. We're gearing up to launch a new feature which makes…

Tech Support Cheat Sheet

Tech Support Cheat Sheet: 'Hey Megan, it's your father. How do I print out a flowchart?'

Twitter Blog: Replies Are Now Mentions

Twitter Blog: Replies Are Now Mentions Hopefully this is a step towards official support of @reply (or @mention) notifications again

No Content Found

Test post from sms (now supported by blogger http://tinyurl.com/bx6vao )

GrandCentral finally resurected

GrandCentral lives again, as Google Voice. Google voice is rolling out, although currently only open to current GrandCentral users. To request an invite when it is open to all, click here Features: Google number - One number for all your calls and SMS Features_thumb1 Call screening - Announce and screen callers Listen in - Listen before taking a call Block calls - Keep unwanted callers at bay SMS - Send, receive, and store SMS Place calls - Call US numbers for free Taking calls - Answer on any of your…

September Madness

A little off the beaten path from what I usually post, but have at, we're taking bets here at work, winner gets to claim Alaska as their sovereign kingdom of awesomeness

I JUST WON £500,000.00 GBP FROM GOOGLE UK!!!

Now, normally gmail's spam system picks up on these. I apparently was entered by using the "Googler" Search Engine. Oh well, next time it will know, and knowing is half the battle! ::hits spam button:: _This E-mail is to inform you that your e-email have emerged you a winner of £500,000.00 GBP (Five Hundred Thousand British Pounds) in our online Give-away 1Oth year Anniversary draws. GoogleUK has successfully organized for the second time a Cash Give-Away marking 2008 10th Anniversary in the UK. Over £2…

Man I would love to do this

Official Google Blog: Running Hood to Coast "A 197-mile Oregon race that starts at Mount Hood, travels through Portland, and finishes on the beach in the town of Seaside. More than 1000 teams participate in the race, with 12 runners on each team running three legs each."

Offerpal Media Facebook to Publish Event Directory for Search Engines

Things have changed slightly since I last wrote about this, but for the better. Look like Google will be able to trawl some of Facebook after all. Searchable data will include People, Pages, Applications, Events, and Groups.

Share your code at ‘Google App Engine Cookbook’

Google App Engine Blog: Our favorite recipes for App Engine, all in one place I'll be submitting some snippets in the near future. Said code will also be posted on here ;)

Official Google Blog: A fresh take on the browser

Official Google Blog: A fresh take on the browser Not too sure how I feel about this. We'll see what it ends up being More info: comic

Back from Vacation

I did as much relaxing as I could on Vacation down at the Jersey Shore. No computers at all. Just me, the beach and a bunch of books. Went on the Human Sling shot (spring shot?) which was a lot of fun, see the video and pictures below. Also, Check out goodreads.com. Its a lot better then any of the other bookshelving services I've reviewed in the past. The reasons why will be in a future post in the not so distant future. [Widget_logo](http: //www.goodreads.com/user/show/1253891) Vacation in WIldwood

Heading on Vacation

Finally getting a vacation in, going down to the Jersey shore. Got a nice stack of books and comics. Can't wait to relax. My next project will be released a few days after I get back. It's almost done =) ![Got my stack of books for vacation at the shore. Bye world se... on TwitPic](http://twitpic.com/img/5gbx- 67847ad849843df02601c352bc7ad4b0.488b2aa3.jpg)

I'm not sure I like the new Facebook Design

Originally I had friendfeed taking care of all my Facebook status updates. I wasn't sure I liked this on the old profile and was experimenting. Now I definitely want it to go. But even working with other apps and feeds, I'm not sure the new profile can display what the old one could. These pics are from the new one. Some valuable information is missing from the posts, diggs, twitter isn't even showing up... I'll have to play some more. What do people think? ![](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ng3QbVQfLZ8/SIaW…

New and Improved Google Personal Homepage (ig)

I unfortunately haven't had time to touch Google reader in almost 2 weeks now, but just caught on lifehacker that Google is rolling out a new personal homepage. Some of you may have it enabled by default. If not, head over to www.google.com/ig/sandbox and sign up to get into the developer sandbox. If you aren't a developer, fake it. My favorite addition is definitely full screen Gmail preview, which I can't get to at work. I wonder how long until they block it.... ![](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ng3QbVQfLZ…

Google Toolbar Available for Firefox 3

Finally, the Google toolbar is available for all those with the Firefox beta or RC releases. Just in time too... took them long enough... happy days are here again!

Google hosting popular javascript libraries

I came across this yesterday looking for the mootools download link. Google is hosting a bunch of the popular javascript libraries on their server for you. Pros: Use Google's Bandwidth Google takes care of keeping the files up to date Common include code across your apps Use Google as a Fast proxy Gadgets will have access to cached files Cons: Have to rely on Google to keep files up to date Probably won't include beta releases of libraries The main page is here and currently includes: jQuery prototype…

Why Microsoft will buy Facebook and keep it closed

Normally I don't just link to other posts, but Scoble's latest article is quite a read. It delves into Microsoft + Yahoo Search + Facebook giving Google and the rest of the open web quite a hard time. Definitely work the time to read.

Google Website Optimizer is out of beta

Google's Website Optimizer is out of beta. I'll be running the blog portion of gPowered through it to see what it thinks of a blogger generated page ;) Results to follow. Everyone have a good weekend! I know I need it!

Google Overheard in the Office

A few days ago I posted some Overheard in New York Google Posts. Today is some Overhead in the Office. It's not quite as good as the orriginal, but the office posts are still really funny. If you like these, subscribe to the feed, enjoy! No Problem, Then Coworker #1 on speakerphone: How do I Google something? Coworker #2: Go to W-W-W dot Google dot com. Then just use it like any other search engine. Coworker #1: What's a search engine? Coworker #2: You know, like when you use Yahoo or MSN to look something…

Google Overheard in New York

If you haven't heard about Overheard in New York ( OHNY ), or don't subscribe to it, I can't recommend it more. It's absolutely hilarious. It's been around for a while and is constantly updated with a dozen or so quotes a day that people hear while walking / riding around New York City. You don't have to live in the city to enjoy it, though you might not get all of the humor. I used Google Reader Search to go through the feed looking for Google references. Here are a few, note: there were a lot more but not…

How often do Google Blogs post?

Google has been using it's blogger platform to deliver news about it's products and services to the masses. Including the multi-language blogs, there are about 76 Google blogs out there. But how often do they post? I went through each one (of the English blogs) and figured out the average number of posts, per month, that they have for 2007 so far. If a blog wasn't around back in January, I took that into account also. The top two are the official Google Blog, and the Google Code blog, which makes sense as…

ProBlogger Birthday Bash: $54,000 in prizes!

ProBlogger's Birthday is here and Darren is running small contests throughout the week with over $54,000 in prizes. I missed the first few, thank you work and being on call, but the prizes have been pretty good so far. The first contest was for copies of Aaron Wall’s SEO Book and all you had to do was comment on the post announcing the contest. The second set of prizes were free listings on SeekZap and all you had to do was sign up! (This is the one I'm really bummed about missing.) The final prize for…

Google Apps September recap

Its definitely been a busy month for Google Apps with the launch of presentations (finally). As a result, there is a new video as well as an updated tour. There is no API available yet but as soon as it comes out I'll post a HOWTO. Spreadsheets added new ways to pull external data. The external sources can include XML, a URL, HTML, or any feed based file. Spreadsheets also added autofill (type Dec and it can autofill December. Type Jan, Feb, Mar, and it will fill in the rest of the months for you. This also…

Google Developer Podcast Ep 9 QuickCap

I got some time today to listen to this Podcast today on the way to and from one of our other buildings today uptown. I was attending SAS training which is a pretty cool data mining / report generation tool. This episode was an interview with T.V. Raman and his seeing eye dog Hubbell on accessibility in a developer's world. Quick recap: Why care about accessibility? (As a developer) You DON'T know your user try to build for the widest range of abilities Think about how people with different abilities will…

Google Developer Podcast Ep 8 Summary

I got some time today on the train today to listen to Episode 8 of the Google Developer Podcast. Normally I'll listen to it at work when it first comes out but it's been way to hectic. Here are some highlights some commentary thrown in. ZohoWriter goes on Gears - See my opinions about this here. Google really needs to step it up and get Gears into their own services. The top two on my list being Gmail and Docs Embed Google Maps in a "youtube like way". Also the Drag zoom and custom marker manager controls…

CanGoogleHearMe.com beta starts

The beta for CanGoogleHearMe.com has started (which I am part of), but that's all I can really say about it. If you don't know what CanGoogleHearMe is or what Aaron and the gang have been up to, check out the original story

Google Books “My Library” Vs. LibraryThing vs. Shelfari

I love to read. I always have and I probably always will. When people ask me why I read so much or about how fast I can, I usually attest to the fact that when I was a child, the household rule was no television on weekdays, so, lots of books and reading. I still remember the first book I was able to finish on my own without any help from my mother; The Mouse and the Motorcycle. A few months ago when I was looking for a service to keep track of all my books (those I had read and those I wanted), the top two…

Rest in Peace Robert Jordan

Alas and woes, one of my favorite authors, Robert Jordan has passed away. RJ is the author of the magnificent The Wheel of Time Series. The series currently had 11 books plus a prequel. Jordan was feverishly working on the 12th and final book entitled A Memory of Light. My old Roommate Kit got me into it and though I had previously tried the series when I was about 10 I didn't get into it, this time around I instantly fell in love with The Eye of the World (first book). I put RJ's work on the same level as…

Google acquires Postini

Google has acquired Postini to better improve Google Apps. A blurb from Postini's website: _With Postini Solutions, you can secure all of your electronic communications email, instant messaging and the web – and manage your company's communication policies from one central location. Postini Solutions can also make it easy to meet your archiving and encryption needs._ Things I would like to see come out of this: The ability to encrypt Gmail messages and Google Docs without having to use greasemonkey A Google…

Playing Halo 3 on IMAX!

Completely off topic, but I had to share. Last Thursday I had the amazing privilege to play Halo 3 on the Lincoln Center IMAX Screen. It was amazing. For those of you that don't know, the Lincoln center IMAX screen is 70-something feet tall. The master chief was bigger then me. My buddy who got the tickets was on line around 6:30, I shower up around 8 or so (they were only letting the first 200 people play), and we got into the theater around 9pm. Joe Tung and Luke started off by running through a campaign…

Slight delay in next HOWTO

I was trying very hard to get the next HOWTO online last night. I got it about 3/4 of the way done but then went to bed so I could go to the gym this morning, but then I ended up setting my alarm for 6pm instead of 6am.... so that was a waste I probably could have finished it. Tonight I'm going to test out Halo 3 on the Lincoln Center Imax Screen which should just be crazy. Until then here's a good article I read yesterday entitled Will The Google Bashers Please Shut Up? Till later, I'll see what time I get…

Last week recap

These are just a few highlights from while I was gone... Google Starts talking about a possible coding competition and gives some practice problems. Maybe I'll take a crack at them on the train on Friday... Google Mashup Editor had a feature release. Check out the post for the full list but my favorite new features include: Ability to edit XML, CSS and HTML files uploaded into the editor. New Tab styling and custom placement of tabs via CSS Documentation for new features Blogoscoped reported that iGoogle…

Back in NY!

Well as much fun as I had on the West Coast, there's no place like home and its good to be back. Highlights from my trip include Pike's Market, Tap House, Microsoft's campus, the Space Needle, and Mount Si in Seattle, and Dreamworks, Chinatown, and San Fransisco itself. Photos to come as soon as I have time to upload them to Picasa. As I posted while I was gone, my favorite thing I glanced at in reader was the fact that Google Reader added a search bar. This is great for me, there are so many times where I…

Vacation!

Hi All, I'm leaving for vacation in a few. I'm going to be in Seattle, Washington until Wed morning and then San Fransisco until the following Sunday. I don't know if / when I'll be able to post anything but I'll try if I have some downtime ;) Hey look, an embedded map!! View Larger Map

Google's Newest Data Center [Pics]

Information Week posted some photos of Google's newest data center near The Dalles' dam. Needless to say, I wouldn't mind access to this baby. Heck, I would want one, but there is no way I would be able to power it. I'm sure the proximity to the dam's power station and water supply were key factors in choosing the location.

NY State Fair Embedded Map

It's really, really easy to put maps onto any site or blog now using Embedded Maps. I threw this together real quick to demonstrate. This past weekend I drove up to Syracuse for the New York State fair. A great time if you have never been. Plenty of fantastic food and drink. I also had to pick up my old roomie, and using Google Maps new multiple destination feature this was easy as well. First stop: Adding the second stop: Getting the code to embed the map by clicking on "Link to this page": If you want…

Codeless Embedded Maps

Google Maps released Embeddable Maps. It's as easy as embedding youtube videos. All you have to do is create your map, and then under the "Link to this page" menu, there is a new option under the link that has some HTML iframe code to add the map anywhere. Check out the next post to see the trip to Syracuse I took this weekend to go to the New York State Fair.

Programmable Web hits 500 API's!

This isn't a Google post per say, but if you haven't checked out Programmable Web, I highly recommend doing so. They catalog API's, Mashups, Howto's, and host contests. Programmable Web has the following Google API's registered, next to them is each API's mashup count: Google AdSense 14 Google AdWords 18 Google Ajax Feeds 5 Google Ajax Search 25 Google Base 18 Google Calendar 19 Google Checkout 4 Google Client Authentication 2 Google Code Search 1 Google Custom Search 0 Google Desktop 8 Google Documents…

Old Google Design back?

Blogoscoped reports that some people have the old design (Google App links are above the search bar instead of the upper left). I checked at work on IE6 and firefox and at home on firefox (on Gutsy) and IE7 both logged in and logged out but still had the new interface. I wonder who has the old one...

Webmaster tools adds Internationalization support

You can now register domains in Webmaster Central with non-English characters in them by supporting IDNA (Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications). Originally only domains with a-z, A-Z, 0-9, or '-' could be used. I tested it out and it looks like its working good!

New Digg Home Page breaks the Linux section on IE?

So I'm sitting here eating lunch and go to see if there is anything new on Digg. Saw the new layout, looks nice, haven't really had a chance to play around with it yet. However, when i got to the Linux/Unix section, it wouldn't show up in Internet Explorer (6). It works fine in FireFox. Does someone over at Digg have a sense of humor or is my browser just acting on the bunk?

Blogger Update: Video in post is out of beta

Or out of "in draft" I should say. Not much to show in the ways of how to use this: A button has been added next to the add an image icon. Maybe I'll use this in my upcoming post about using spreadsheets and base as a database... hmmm...

My current fav Google Map Mashups

These are some sites I've found since people have started making Google Map Mashups either because they are really cool or I use them a lot. DiggMap - Diggs are shown in real-time on the map for users that have specified their location in their profile. Google Maps Batch Geocoder Google Offices - Shows Google Offices around the world Traffic and Weather Maps - Mashes Traffic conditions, road closings, construction, and weather. Not too useful to me as I don't have a car anymore but it was when I did ;) Walk…

Posting to Blogger from Google Docs & Spreadsheets

I had seen some posts in the past (like this one) and figured I would give it a try. The first thing I liked was it feels a lot less cramped then the traditional blogger interface. Secondly it feels more responsive which for me is pretty good for me as I'm on a 6 year old laptop a lot of the time. Tagging is a little harder. You can tag existing tags in blogger but I found it easier to post from Docs & Spreadsheets and then go back into the Blogger interface to tag. Blogger picks up the post title from the…

HOWTO: post code

Posting code is made quite easy by using SyntaxHighlighter. It's pretty easy to set up and works on any html sites, as well as blogger and wordpress. I'll be using it heavily throughout these posts. 3 easy steps: Include the SyntaxHighlighter.css file at the top of your page. At the bottom of the page, include the brushes and other js files you will need, as well as the function call to stylize the <pre> tags: Then, place the code you want in between these two steps using <pre> tags that the javascript will…