ChatRoulette, Elevators, and Panopticons

February 17th, 2010

ChatRoulette is blowing up. Mostly with naked dudes, it seems. Let’s try some crowdsourced course-correction.

Too Much Buzz!

February 9th, 2010

The word “Buzz” as a product name is a joke. Especially when applied to yet another microblog/status site and API.

Amazon vs Apple Has Gone Too Far

February 8th, 2010

I received a message from Amazon this morning letting me know that the Kindle Developer Kit application process was ready for the general public. I clicked the link and was taken to the KDK site, only to be told that Safari isn’t supported.

Marketing the iPad

January 28th, 2010

Overall, I think the iPad is an interesting device and once the dust settles I think the price point will be attractive for a supplement to our “main” computers. The iPad will fill a spot for people who consume more than they create – a large audience, for sure, and one most of us fit into depending on context and day-part.

Kindle vs Apple iPad

January 25th, 2010

Many have chimed in, ahead of the Apple tablet announcement, on whether the new Apple device will be a “Kindle killer”

Cartilage: A Monk Skeleton for DataMapper

August 28th, 2009

I wanted to bootstrap a Monk project using DataMapper. It was very easy, so I extracted the skeleton and put it up on GitHub.

Lazybones: A Monk Skeleton for CouchDB and Sinatra

August 27th, 2009

I created a skeleton for MonkRb that leverages CouchDB and Sinatra.

UX in Bed

August 21st, 2009

One of the questions I ask when working on a new project is, “Where will people use this?”

Building Erlang on Snow Leopard

August 17th, 2009

The macports install of CouchDB requires Erlang (naturally) and Erlang requires WxWidgets and Tk, which are probably pointless for most uses, and won’t compile on 10.6.

Microsoft Deprecating IE6 the Right Way

August 12th, 2009

Microsoft Office web apps will not officially support IE6. But they also won’t block it.

Renewed Interest in Rails

August 7th, 2009

An episode of FLOSS featuring David Heinemeier Hansson rekindled my interest in Rails.

Don’t Stop Supporting IE6

August 6th, 2009

Planning to drop support for IE 6? Instead, redefine “support” and stay positive.

Augmented Reality Bites

July 30th, 2009

I have this new rule I’m working on: If it’s easier to buy your product than to engage with your marketing, you’re doing it wrong.

Twitter: 1, Robots: 0

July 29th, 2009

With the insanity around the Yahoo and Bing/Microsoft relationship, I wonder if Twitter – or an app built around it – won’t become the search and recommendation tool we all really want.

The Emperor’s New API

July 9th, 2009

If you’re adding a REST API to your site, you’re probably doing something wrong. Maybe.

Toward the Bare Metal: From Flash to Processing, OpenFrameworks, and Beyond

July 8th, 2009

There is a common pattern in the contemporary interactive digital art world: artists’ tools are getting more hardcore under the hood.

SproutCore Article on O’Reilly InsideRIA Blog

August 13th, 2008

I’m now blogging for InsideRIA.

DataMapper/Merb Ambiguous SQLite Error

July 27th, 2008

If you get an error such as:

near ")": syntax error

Check to see if you have any models declaring themselves as DataMapper::Resource but WITHOUT any property declarations.

Business Value in rSpec Stories

July 9th, 2008

Because rSpec provides a friendly, more readable means of describing use cases/stories, I’ve taken to inserting business value statements directly into the specs. While this could get unwieldy, I think it helps keep stories focused while providing clear context and value to coders.

iPhone Unit Testing with Ruby

July 4th, 2008

Well, Dr. Nic is kicking ass again.

Though I’m a recent convert to rSpec for my Merb work, I actually prefer to unit test Objective-C with OCUnit. I think it’s just part of that prejudice that tests should be written in the language of the app. Also, the more ‘natural’ it feels to write tests, the more likely folks will do so. In my experience, a great number of Obj-C developers have no interest in writing tests in the first place…