Skull Ninja Labs

Dave & Amber's blog

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Amber Reyngoudt- Doing the Unexpected

"People will tell you you can't do it, but if you want it enough and work hard enough, you can be successful and have what you want." - Amber Reyngoudt

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Teaching a machine to play Mario, using the NEAT algorithm, with pretty cool results.  There are endless applications for machine learning; it is something we’re thinking about constantly, and I expect to see many more cool and useful applications at the consumer level soon.

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Apple TV usage is surging -- at the expense of Mac - CNET

People are firing up Apple's streaming-media box more than Roku to watch traditional TV via the Internet, though the company paying the biggest price for that growth may be Apple itself, based on Adobe data.

AppleTV is the ‘next big thing’ as people start cutting off cable.  I haven’t extracted myself from cable yet, but with HBO Now and Netflix original shows, I’m running out of excuses.  One significant update to AppleTV -- an update that allows 3rd party apps -- and that will push me over the edge.

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Apple takes on Google Now with iOS 9's proactive assistance

Apple's new iOS 9 is getting proactive. At WWDC 2015, the company has announced proactive assistance as part of its latest annual iPhone / iPad update. Your iPhone / iPad will now anticipate what...

As an app developer, the coolest thing to come out of WWDC was Apple’s Proactive Assistant.  Specifically, the small bullet point indicating that their search will surface in-app content.

Similar to how Facebook consumes open graph, iOS 9 will be able to consume structured content, such as products and locations, and make them searchable outside the app.  This sort of functionality exists for the first-party apps included on the device today, but I’m excited about the possibility of bringing my apps into the fold, and having their data display along the Contact and Safari apps, among others.

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Yahoo Pipes: An obituary for a former 'internet milestone'

In his first appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions, David Cameron, now British premier but then Leader of the Opposition, sneered at Tony Blair: “I want to talk about the future…He was…

I remember when Pipes launched.  It was the coolest of the ‘mashup tools’ back then, but was also the most complicated.  I never did more than play with it a few times.

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Migrating Design to iOS7

Snag My Spot is our location-based list app that has maintained a small but strong following over the past few years.  As iOS has evolved, so has our app.  Under iOS6 the app was designed around the then-popular skeuomorphic design aesthetic.

When iOS7 launched, this cause some problems.  First, some of the textured UI elements were no longer positioned correctly, due to the status bar now a styled part of the app UI.  Secondly, the app looked immediately out of date.

To move over to iOS 7 without making any significant changes to the app presentation, the process was simple.  Simplify and flatten.  We also took the opportunity to brighten up the design a bit.

Instead of removing the existing textures, we instead decided to blur them to match Apple's popular iOS7 overlay affect.

We also removed the shadows off of all the UI elements, including updating the buttons to simple flat icons.

We were already using a tall skinny font in the UI, but we now expanded the use of the font to standard iOS interface objects, like the title bar and left hand menu.

Finally, we removed some excess iconography -- keeping it simple!  We also added some additional swipe animation effects.  One important aspect of iOS7 is that everything in the UI should flow.

With those few changes, Snag My Spot kept its basic look while shedding its 'outdated' skeuomorphism.

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Wallabii Beta Launched!

Wallabii is about discovering and sharing cool products.

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INTERVIEWS WITH INTERESTING PEOPLE by Paul Campbell

Amber will be speaking at Úll 2013 . Use this link for €100 off a Regular Admission ticket. Amber Reyngoudt is the co-founder of Skull Ninja Labs , a products company bootstrapped with consulting for iOS apps, out of San Francisco. She is currently busy working on their latest product, Wallabii , a mobile social shopping tool. I meet Amber in Founder’s Den, in Soma. It’s the epitome of the SF Tech Elite machine: a member’s only office space, premium rent, invitation only. There’s a 6 month maximum lease: this is incubation only. Skull Ninja’s 6 months was up last month, but their logo is still on the door. The office is tiny: enough to house two small desks and a whiteboard squeezed in to the back. This is the San Francisco startup dream. “My name is Amber Reyngoudt. I am an entrepreneur and an engineer, primarily an iOS engineer.” It’s super interesting to me to hear anyone describe themselves as an entrepreneur first: indeed it’s a subject close to my heart that I’ve wr

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Skull Ninja is now at Founders Den.  Stop by if you want to chat!

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Why the Future of Media is in Your Pocket

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We actually create something with our own hands and then say, ‘I made this.'

Amber Reyngoudt

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