Oct

24

Today at CTIA, Facebook announced support for mobile versions of Facebook applications. Well at least kind of. I’m not entirely sure of the details yet, but it looks like app developers can tie into mobile components, like SMS messaging. Facebook uses SMS to alert me when I have received a new inbox message. This is convenient and handy. Apps can now use this, which is cool, because individual developers would have to rely on email->sms gateways or pay for a messaging service to work with all carriers. Now it seems they can piggyback on Facebook, who have the message infrastructure in place.

It also sounds like apps can have mobile versions that will work with the mobile version of the site. Note that there are two. One wap (or maybe xhtml-mp), the other for iPhone. The iPhone app is the best app out there. Although the applications aren’t supported, basic Facebook functionality works fabulously. I’ll have to take a look at the developer API a little more now and see what else can be exploited for mobile apps. The SMS gateway is enough already for the little guy.

Thanks Facebook, I’m actually becoming a fan.

Oct

18

I’m having a love/hate relationship with my news feeds lately. I switched to using Google Reader as my main reader to help speed up my feed crawling. It helps. The iPhone interface is nice, but there was still something that was keeping me from liking my feed reading habits. It kept feeling like a chore to read them. I felt guilty if I didn’t at least browse all the posts. Seeing boldness indicating unread was like having new email messages in my inbox. This is obviously not sufficient with the number of feeds I had subscribed to. So yesterday, I removed many of them (probably cut 50%). Quite a few I hadn’t read for months. Some simply had too many posts and noise. Sorry Engadget, I couldn’t keep up. But today, I feel much better. I can almost read all of my feeds in a fifteen minute glance, if I have that much time in the morning. I’m trying to check my feeds at two set times during the day, once in the morning and once at night. We’ll see how that goes. But I certainly feel better that I took the time to go through and do some “spring cleaning.” Most feeds just weren’t relevant any more any way. So now, I am going to be very “firm” on what I subscribe to.

Do you have policies for feed reading? Do you subscribe to more than you can read in one sitting? I’m curious.

Oct

8

Vista is a POS

October 8, 2007 | 11 Comments

So my mother-in-law was due for a new machine. She found one that did everything she wanted, including the media center so she could do some video projects. She is not a power user. Mostly surfing, email, and Quicken.

First issue was her version of Office 2002 not being supported. Outlook simply wouldn’t remember passwords. Lame. Next was Quicken just stopped working after a week. She was getting the dreaded “Quicken Launcher has stopped working.” It worked just fine for a week, not sure why it suddenly stopped. So the machine came back to my office for fixing. I hate being the family IT guy, but that is another post.

So I fixed Office, by upgrading to 2003. Next was Quicken. Seemed like maybe the install got corrupted etc… Backed up the data files and reinstalled. No dice. Got the “Launcher stopped working” error message instantly. Upgrade Quicken manually. Again, same error. Uninstall everything, do a system cleanup. Reinstall everything as administrator. Again same error. FU Microsoft! Try opening straight from data file. Same error. Argh.

So now I’ll call Intuit, as if I have time for this sh*t. I’ve scoured the message boards, there is not a clear fix.

From my short time looking for fixes, it looks like I am not alone. Many people feel that Vista is a big paperweight. Many people are having software issues. Things simply won’t install at all, or will install and work partially. Or will install and work for a week before stopping. Very frustrating. I, for one, wish she would have found a machine with XP MCE, but no retailers are selling XP machines any more. If I had a copy, I would reformat the machine with it. Vista is simply not worth the upgrade, in fact it seems to be a step backwards, other than the “elegant” solution of doing an administrator rights popup for every single process that tries to run/install/modify the registry. Give me a break. Malware sucks, spyware sucks, both exist because Windows sucks.

Happy Monday!

Update: this issue is not isolated to just Quicken, doing a Google search for “has stopped working error in Vista” returns a sh*t-ton of results for every application imaginable.

Oct

2

OK, so that is an alarmist title, but after seeing a couple of other posts, like this, I am starting to wonder. I know more and more people going “open.” I don’t know the exact reason. Seems to be a mentality. Some people are genetically wired to be OK working in cubes in corporate America. Others, prefer smaller more creative environments. Of course there are the MS haters, but I think this is more than that.

We, at Barefoot, have a kick ass job opportunity available for a ASP.NET developer, but we are getting very little qualified response. I know there are qualified people out there. I know a number of really good and smart .NET developers. Perhaps it is a declining community and all the developers left are currently employed (at corporate America)? If that is the case, I would think more than a few of them would be willing to ditch the cube and join a robust agency that is willing to provide a great opportunity to grow, learn, expand, and cross platforms if desired. The few I know are actually working as freelancers/consultants. I can applaud that, but that can’t be the case for all .NETers.

Hell, James Avery is attending Rails conferences and making posts about how .NET needs something like Rake. Is ASP.NET simply not getting the focus, is it behind on the times? Is it the cost? Are students not learning it? I’m not in the community so I don’t have an inside track. Startups aren’t using .NET, at least not any that I can think of. Someone has to have a clue here? Any .NET developers out there willing to join a team of passionate developers and willing to be an enthusiast for the platform (and explain to this “open” developer the thinking of the .NET community)?

Oct

2

Flash Lite 3 released

October 2, 2007 | 1 Comment

The marketing guys are saying that this is the biggest release Adobe has ever done for mobile. Not sure, I agree. BUT, this release could have a major impact. The number one reason is mobile video. Flash Lite 3 supports Flash Video. Nokia is paying attention. That is great. I will have to update the MediaPlayback example I created that shipped with Flash 8 as a Flash Lite 2.0 example. Congrats Adobe!

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