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To better compete, Best Buy is shaking up its business. In addition to closing some of its big-box stores, the company said it would focus on what sets it apart from its rivals: Trained sales staff that can help shoppers get the most out of their tablets, televisions and other electronic devices, including technical support from its ”Geek Squad” service and repair unit.

From the NYT story regarding Best Buy's store closings.

Nothing against the folks working at Best Buy, but does anyone in the real world see them as a major selling point? The salespeople have always struck me as the worst part about shopping there.

marco

We can’t prevent developers from being creepy, so Apple needs to step in.

shop-friendly-blog

I totally agree with this. In fact, I would argue that the data in the Address Book is a bigger privacy concern than Location Services because it concerns people other than the user, and who have no control of this access.

#ios #address book #privacy

Thanks to kottke.org for tipping me off to this. It's a blog dedicated to highlighting comments from people who think Onion stories are real (if you don't know what the Onion is then I am afraid we cannot be friends).

This is going to be wow. I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know!

Jimmy Wales regarding the Wikipedia blackout in protest of SOPA.

Whoops.

Actually, the scary thing about this is the quote from Google:

The Google Japan official, however, said that certain data, such as email addresses and home addresses modified to remove the most specific identifying elements, would continue to be provided to apps makers because the data "are necessary to enable developers to keep track of customers."

#google #android #japan #whoops

Anyone who reads the news on a regular basis (I hope that is everyone!) needs to read this to understand why "facts" must be questioned and/or challenged.

#truth #news #nytimes #required

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone!

I know that I'm a bit late with saying that, but it has been a busy couple of months for me, evidenced by my lack of blog entries :)

Since you last heard from me I managed to release two iphone apps - Vault and Watchdog. Vault was release in the first half of December and Watchdog just release over the weekend. I am proud of both apps, although their development stories couldn't be more different.

I started work on Vault in June of last year. My concept was very simple - a firewalled area for photos and contacts that is seperate from the built-in Contacts and Photo apps. The idea was born out of my eternal desire to avoid the mingling of data from my work and private life. I made that mistake when I was in my twenties, and it took a long time to correct it, so I'm hoping to prevent others from making the same mistake.

The development took a long time - a lot of it was getting the interactions just right. Isn't that always the case? After a lot of wrangling with UITableView animations I finally got it to a point that I was happy with it and was able to release it into the wild.

Watchdog was an app whose idea came to me at the tail-end of my time working on Vault. In fact, it was probably my biggest motivator to ship Vault, because I wanted to get started on Watchdog. And once I got started, I couldn't stop. The only thing that prevented my from shipping Watchdog in December was the iTunes Connect blackout where apps cannot be submitted/approved.

The idea behind Watchdog was very simple - an app that I can use to quickly check the status of a URL. As a developer, I have a number of websites that I am responsible for managing - opening up each site in a browser just doesn't cut it - it takes way too much effort, especially on a mobile device. So, I wrote an app that sends a quick HTTP request to the url and logs the status code returned by the server and give me a visual cue to the health of the site. Good response = green, bad response = red. Simple and in my opinion, highly effective.

I'll be writing more about these apps in the near future, but as you would expect I encourage you to check them out! Vault is $0.99 (in the US, other territories will differ). Watchdog is free but if you want to monitor more than 5 URLS you'll need to upgrade to the pro version, which is a $0.99 in-app purchase.

If you have any questions or comments about the apps please let me know, I'd love to hear from you!

#iphone #programming #app store #vault #watchdog

What a terrible idea. Do they really think they need to expend engineering resources on this? Are they worried that the 100 people or so that bought the playbook are not going to keep buying them if flash isn't on it?

Look, RIM, you have much bigger problems than Flash. Fix those first and then, after the world has moved on from Flash, you might have the luxury of getting the band back together.

#flash #deadtechnology #rim #lolwut

Good decision on Adobe's part. They had five years and they couldn't really get it where they needed it to be. Even the people I know who have devices that support it never use it anyway.

#flash #flash mobile #adobe #deadtechnology

To anyone who doesn't have kids this is by far the most accurate and honest description of parenthood I have ever read. Extra points for the graph.

Thoughts on the iPhone 4S

Having lived full-time with my iPhone 4S for about a week now I figured it was time to put some of my impressions on paper. Keep in mind that I upgraded from a 3GS so the WOW factor might not be as high for an iPhone 4 user.

Battery Life

The battery on my 3GS had gotten to the point where I could barely make it to lunch before charging (2.5 years of heavy use will do that to a battery) so it is with great pleasure that I can now leave the house without fear of running out of juice. As a frame of reference I use the phone heavily during my commute (about 1 hour each way on a train) listening to podcasts and playing games with GPS and notifications off. I rarely speak on my phone so I cannot vouch for talk-time.

Screen

In a word - perfect. The screen size is just right for me, the colors are great (although, I noticed they are a bit warmer on the 4S then the 3GS), the resolution is fantastic and touch screen is responsive.

Performance

iOS has always been responsive (even the iOS 5 developer previews) on my 3GS, but as time went on and apps became more demanding I could start to see cracks on the old phone. With the 4S there is not even a hint of a stutter or dropped frame no matter what I do or throw at it. This is especially true of web browsing - pages seem to load instantly - even ESPN which was quite slow on the 3GS.

I'm really looking forward to some of the new crop of games being written specifically for the 4S to see what they can bring to the table.

iOS 5

A lot has been said about iOS 5 so I'm just going to pick out some of the smaller things that I have found to enjoy.

Define

Define is a new feature that shows up when you highlight a word. I know, some of your are thinking "It's just a dictionary, what's the big deal?" Well, if I only read English content I would agree with you. However, living in Japan I am often reading Japanese content, and try as I might, I am still not a fluent reader. With the Define feature I can highlight a Japanese word and get the definition in English. This is SO MUCH BETTER than copying the word, opening Safari, navigating to dic.yahoo.co.jp, pasting in the word, and since I am usually on the subway, hoping to god that the definition shows up before we leave the station and my signal drops. 100% WIN.

Notifications

Love the new system (thank you competition!), especially the level of customization it offers. It also makes it easier to check the stock prices in the middle of the night (since I live in Japan the U.S. stock market moves while I sleep).

Reminders

When I was beta testing iOS5 on my 3GS I had a hard time figuring out the use case for reminders. Typing in the info (and I find this to be true of all apps that require date input) was such a pain that usually just used the notes app for that stuff. With Siri integration however, it all comes together. For my money, reminders plus Siri is the best new feature.

Custom Vibration Patterns

I never have my ringer turned on, so being able to set custom vibration patterns for specific contacts is a godsend. Not too mention the fun that is had creating the patterns.

Lock Screen Camera

Much easier to catch those "OMG my kids are hilarious" moments.

One Thing I Hate

Newsstand. Why on Earth can I not delete that app? At least allow me to hide it away into another folder.

Conclusion

Great upgrade and worth it if you are coming from a 3GS.

Catchy.

Siri

I was able to pick up my iPhone 4S over the weekend. Coming from a 3GS I'm naturally impressed with the device and I'll be putting up a longer piece with my thoughts on it as well as iOS5.

While I'm putting that together though I wanted to give a general impression about Siri.

When I first heard about it I felt that it was going to be one of those "demo features." You know, the feature that you play with the first couple of days and then never use again.

I'm finding out though that there is great potential here.

In particular, creating reminders is simply awesome. I use to shy away from reminders because inputting them was such a pain, but not it is as simple as saying what you want to do, and I've not had any problem with Siri understanding what I am saying.

#siri #iPhone 4s #reminders #cool