meta_robert

TwitterTrak made it into the appStore yesterday. It was really fun to write, but was also an ordeal as learning experiences go. The learning curve was steep going from web apps to iPhone development. It included learning Objective-C (tough, but I now really like it), the basics of how iPhones work, the MVC framework Apple created for iPhone development, and Apple’s Objective-C API.

I learned a LOT in the month it took me to put together TwitterTrak. I submitted it to the appStore, an ordeal in itself, and started putting that lesson to work on BeTwittered for the iPhone. One week later, my submission was rejected because I’d not put any network detection into the app. Basically, if you had no wireless or cellular data connection, TwitterTrak would silently fail. No letting you know. Ugh. I added that and went back to BeTwittered development. A week later, TwitterTrak was accepted into the appStore. And, I was finished with version 1.0 of BeTwittered for the iPhone, which is now awaiting approval to get into the appStore itself.

I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard in my life. Long hours, no days off, high stress, and man have I enjoyed it! At least in this, getting laid off from my systems engineering job has been a good thing.

Oh well, so much for the break.  Back to work.

Robert

This morning, besides the normal work search routine I’ve developed, I’ve updated 32hours.com to include TwitterPing, updated Wordpress and some modules here and on 32Hours.com.

I’ve recently written a couple of new gadgets/apps, and was a bit surprised to realize I’d never linked to my little utility of choice (TwitterPing) to check out Twitters health.

Have a nice day on the internets
Robert

TwitterSearch was approved by Google and showed up in the iGoogle gadgets list last night. I’ve been using it a while, and my favorite search is currently “metarobert” (my twitter id) Because keeps up with all of my conversations with people, it has turned my iGoogle page into a bit of a dashboard since I’m also running BeTwittered.

Besides looking for work, I’ve put in a bit of time writing some code over the past week.  I added a search tab to BeTwittered and fixed some bugs, last night a wrote a little app called BeTrendy that will be a google gadget (waiting approval), and now I’m starting to think about the AIR version of BeTwittered again.  That would give me some wanted exposure to writing desktop apps on Adobe’s AIR platform.  I’ve already written quite a bit of it, and I was definitely enjoying it!

So I’m at home today, my second “workday” home after getting cut during layoffs. BeTwittered died just a couple hours after that. BeTwittered going down actually bothered me more than losing my job! So, today I get to the business of updating my resume and making contacts. I’ll also be getting some work done on one or two business ideas, one being a way for people to easily make their web browsing private from public places, and to tunnel through filters. Filtering is OK, but not if it’s by your government. I like poking holes in things like the “Great Firewall of China” It’s fun, and easy!
Robert

I had such a hard time finding podcasts I liked, and was SO appreciative when I found someone else who had a list I liked, that I thought I’d better return the favor.  Below is a list of the podcasts (or netcasts, if you prefer) that I’m currently subscribed to.

Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: The Naked Scientists Naked Science Radio Show PODCAST – Stripping Down Science
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: Astronomy Cast
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: FLOSS Weekly
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: GitCasts Screencasts
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: Leo Laporte – The Tech Guy
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: LinuxCast
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: LugRadio (high-quality mp3) defunct, these guys moved on
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: MacBreak Weekly
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: net@night
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: Security Now!
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: Skepticality – Science and Revolutionary Ideas
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: this WEEK in TECH – MP3 Edition
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: Ubuntu UK Podcast
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: You Look Nice Today
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: Skeptic
Subscribe: RSS, Podcast – Home Page: developerWorks OSS Tech library

Robert

Cooler looking, to me. Dont ya think?

I just realized that I’d never “leaked” the web addresses for BeTwittered. There are currently four. One each for mobile, Twitter, the TWiT army canteen, and for Identica. And here they are, in that order:
http://betwittered.com/m
http://betwittered.com/betwittered
http://betwittered.com/betwittered-canteen
http://betwittered.com/betwittered-identica
Have fun,
Robert

UPDATE:   Here is the URL to add BeTwittered as a gadget in various places.  For example, in GMail, go to Settings|Gadgets and paste in the following in to add it to your GMail page:

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/106092714974714025177/TwitterGadget.xml

on 32Hours I created a new install badge for BeTwittered, and made another more visible. I already had the iGoogle badge. Creating the Blogger badge and install was a pain. They sure don’t help you out with usable instructions on what to do. Amazing to me that they aren’t fostering addons and gadgets for their blogging properties.

I’m far from an expert on the topic of “unobtrusive Javascript,” but I’ve seen some real benefits over the past couple of days. I’ve spent several hours re-writing BeTwittered, with some design ideas already in my head. One is the need to separate the front end (the web page) from the back end (the server and the data) Another idea was to move heavily to Javascript on the client-side, and to make it unobtrusive. The basic idea is to remove javascript code from the HTML. What you end up with is an HTML page that is easier to understand at a glance, and also lot’s of Javascript code that binds to DOM events. The Javascript, in my case, is now much more organized. So far, it’s made progress amazingly easy, and made my little hobby a lot more fun. This translates to better productivity.

My opinon? If you are fairly comfortable with HTML and Javascript, it may be time to start looking at separating the two. A Google search on the topic of “unobtrusive javascript” should get you lots of resources to get started. If you are just starting out with HTML and Javascript, if things like the DOM, object properties and “event binding” still lie far outside your comfort zone, you may want to wait a bit. There is a bit of a paradigm shift, so it’s probably best to get very comfortable with the basics first. If you are a “pro” you’ve probably stopped reading this post and maybe cringed a bit at my take on this. I bet I could start a flame war with a comment on an all or nothing approach. But I wont. It looks to me like hiding ALL of the code from the HTML makes it hard to understand what the hell will happen when you serve up a page.