Here's yet another cloud camp twitter feed, but this time, it's not just my tweets. It's from everyone who attended the conference. Enjoy!
July 2009 Archives
A few days ago, I went to CloudCamp Boston at the Microsoft R&D Center in Boston. Here's all my thoughts from during the session and thereafter. More tweets will show up as time goes on, so check back soon.
Well, since I got an invite to the Beta of Google Voice, I decided to write a series of reviews concerning the product. As of now, I haven't done much with it, and will write more in the future. 
When you open google voice, you see the screen at left. It looks somewhat like Gmail, which I believe was google's aim with the product. A gmail for your phone calls. The tips across the bottom of the screen fill you in on some of the features in Google Voice that may not be apparent to you at first. I can say that I didn't know that some features existed before I saw it in the tips panel. Me not having any voicemails, this window may look pretty boring for everyone else. However, when I start to migrate to this number, more voicemails will start to show where it says "No Items in your inbox." What's really cool about this service is that if a voicemail comes in, google voice will automatically transcribe it for you. That way, you can read it. It is right most of the time, but it does allow you to listen to them in the little bubble that contains the voicemail. the play button is right above the transcription.
The inbox bar very much resembles Gmail, but has a few more features. It allows access to all of your calls and SMS messages, along with transcriptions that you have made or recorded. At the bottom of the screen is your account balance. This money is used to make international calls. As it turns out, the rates offered by google for international calls is significantly less than the rates offered my most phone companies.
When you want to place a call from Google Voice, all you have to do is navigate to one of your contacts and click call. Google voice will automatically connect your call to the recipient, who will see your caller id as your google voice number. Because you are hooked up by google, you can record and transcribe calls through google. All of the recordings are accessible through the online service.
All of your contacts are listed in the contacts pane, and can be edited and used from there. A contact can have an individual greeting, which is changed from the Google Voice Settings link under the contact. For instance, of your brother calls, you can have it set up so that he hears you telling him specifically that you're not available, and can be reached at a different time or number. But if your annoying mother in law keeps calling you, you can have a message telling here that she has the wrong number. A very useful feature, if you ask me.
All in all, Google Voice is a very useful product. If you have signed up for an invite and haven't gotten one yet, BE PATIENT! I signed up for an invite when google bought the product and got one four days ago. They are still sending them out, so hold on. You won't be disappointed.
More on Google Voice in the near Future.
All for Now!
Well, after months of waiting for an invite to the "Private" Beta of google voice, I finally got my invite yesterday. I figure that I should capitalize on this invite and blog about it. I haven't set up much, however, I'll post some reviews, tips, and tricks soon. Hold on till then!
All for now!
One of the best resources that I have found if you want to learn how to develop for iPhone is found on iTunes U. The provider is Stanford University, and it is actually one of the classes that they offer, recorded and posted. CS-193P, to be exact. The class is taught mainly by apple developers, and is for everyone of all skill levels. It takes you through all of the basics for developing, and really teaches you well. I've found it to be a valuable resource that everyone should check out!
All for now!
Well, I just have to talk about Doppelganger, but Jonnie Hallman. All it is is a small application that downloads videos from Youtube. It is very similar to Tube TV, but it is only a little window that you drag youtube URL's to. It downloads them to a folder of your choosing, and id written in AIR, so it runs on any platform. I use it, and so should you!All for now!
The next twitter client that I will review is TweetDeck. TweetDeck is by far my favorite application, though I don't use it regularly. I would, if I had a bigger screen and a bigger processor. I currently use DestroyTwitter because it uses about 10% less CPU on my powerbook on average than TweetDeck. But, on a macbook, it really doesn't make much of a difference. If I had a Macbook, I'd definitely be using TweetDeck.
When you first start it up you see this, which is the standard view. Notice the Scroll Bar at the bottom of the window, that's because I have four columns open right now. You can have as many columns open at a time as you want, but for me, four is a nice number. Across the top is the options, which let you open more columns with the buttons in the top left of the window. In the top right are the refresh, single column, settings, and bug reporter button.
When a new tweet comes in, this little notification window comes in and shows up above all of your other open applications, I don't like this notification system as much as DestroyTwitter, because it doesn't show you who the tweets are from, but just a count.
One feature that TweetDeck does have that DestroyTwitter and other applications doesn't have is syncing. If you are running TweetDeck on your desktop and on your iPhone, as well as another computer, then you will see exactly the same columns on all three. Also, if you mark a tweet as read on one it shows as read on all other machines. That feature is amazing.
One feature that TweetDeck has that no other twitter client does is integration with 12seconds.tv. that is a little 12 second video sharing site that I use quite frequently. Their integration into tweetdeck is a really helpful tool.
Tweetdeck also has Twitpic integration, just like DestroyTwitter. It looks about the same, but is a little quicker.
All in all, I'd rate TweetDeck a 4.8 out of 5.
Next: Tweetie!
All for now!
The first Twitter client that I will review is Jonnie Hallman's DestroyTwitter. This is one of the best clients that I have used. It's interface is compact, yet extremely robust. 
When you start it up, this is what you see after you login. Of course, I have mine set up in Expanded View, so that I can see what's going on all the time. 
When you start it up, this is what you see after you login. Of course, I have mine set up in Expanded View, so that I can see what's going on all the time. When a new tweet comes in, you see this window above all of your running applications to let you know.
This little notification pane is extremely handy, especially when you are doing other things on your computer and want to keep up with what's going on. I do believe that this product's notification pane is much better than Growl or TweetDeck's notifications, because you can interact with the tweet within the notification pane.
When you go to make a tweet, this is what comes up in the all tweets column, to allow you to do that. The Twitdoc button is changeable to be a Twitpic or yFrog button, so that you can upload an image or video. You can shorten URL's with ease, and shrink your Tweets so that it all fits. TweetDeck has this too, but it is faster in DestroyTwitter.
DestoryTwitter does contain Twitpic integration, and previews images within the application. this is useful, however it does not play videos in the application.
All in all, this is a really great application, and I highly recommend it.
Next Up: TweetDeck.
All for now!
Well, I finished a document today, that needed to be reviewed by a small group of people. Well, I thought that I could use Acrobat to get it done. As it turns out, the review and comment wizard is pretty straightforward. Set up a server, set up recipients, and you're done! It's that easy! I really didn't think that it would be that easy, because people write whole books about it and do entire presentations. But it really is! I'll definatley use this again soon.
All for now!
Due to my increasing amount of activity on Twitter, I have decided to blog a little about it. Tomorrow, I'll post the first in my series of reviews on popular clients for Twitter. I'll do a few: Tweetie, DestroyTwitter, Tweetdeck, Nambu, HootSuite, and Spaz. I'll try to do as many as I can quickly, so that you can choose the best one for yourself.
All for now!
Well, since I have successfully installed the iPhone simulator on my PowerPC mac, I have also installed the iMt plugin into the backend of my blog. I am actually writing this post from within the iPhone simulator, which I have to say is pretty cool.
My real purpose here is to review the iMt interface. When you go to write an entry from within the wesite, not much is labeled, and you can't tell exactly where the entry is supposed to go at first. You can't select multiple categoris to place the entry in, which isn't so bad I supppose. Otherwise, I can't even tell wether this enry will show up, because there appears to be two entry boxes.
All, it's pretty confusing.
All for now...
When Apple announced that it's iPhone SDK would not be supported on a PowerPC mac, many developers were highly disappointed. I was one of them. Well, it turns out that the iPhone SDK 2.2.1 and before, not 3.0, are actually universal binaries. It only took a few days for people to figure this out. Here's a detailed description of what do do from the Apokalypse Software Corp.
Here's how you can install the iPhone SDK for 2.2.1 on a Mac running at least MOX 10.5.5:
1. Ensure you have at least 6 gigs of disk space available. If you have tried to install the iPhone SDK on the target volume before, it may state an upgrade will be performed instead of an install. Sadly, the only solution I currently have for this situation is to uninstall Xcode using /Library/Developer/3.1/uninstall-devtools.
2. Download the SDK disk image.
3. Mount the image by double-clicking it.
4. Copy the mounted volume to a hard drive.
5. Navigate to iPhone SDK.mpkg/Contents/iPhoneSDK.dist in the copied folder and replace line 340 which should bestart_selected = "isIntel() && hasRightOS() && agreedToSLA()"
withstart_selected = "true"
6. Run the installer, selecting either the default location /Developer or another directory name if you're looking to preserve your current Xcode installation.
7. After a successful installation, navigate from the installation directory (default of/Developer) to/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/Library/Xcode/Specifications/iPhone Simulator Architectures.xcspec, and make the following two changes.
First, replace
{ Type = Architecture;
Identifier = Standard;
Name = "Standard (iPhone Simulator: i386)";
Description = "32-bit iPhone Simulator architectures";
ListInEnum = YES;
SortNumber = 1;
RealArchitectures = ( i386 );
ArchitectureSetting = "ARCHS_STANDARD_32_BIT";
},
with
{
Type = Architecture;
Identifier = Standard;
Name = "Standard (iPhone Simulator: i386)";
Description = "32-bit iPhone Simulator architectures";
ListInEnum = YES;
SortNumber = 1;
RealArchitectures = (
i386,
);
ArchitectureSetting = "ARCHS_OLD_STANDARD_32_BIT";
},
{
Type = Architecture;
Identifier = Standard;
Name = "Standard (iPhone Simulator: ppc)";
Description = "32-bit iPhone Simulator architectures";
ListInEnum = YES;
SortNumber = 1;
RealArchitectures = (
ppc,
);
ArchitectureSetting = "ARCHS_STANDARD_32_BIT";
},
then, replace
{ Type = Architecture;
Identifier = i386;
Name = "Intel";
Description = "32-bit Intel";
PerArchBuildSettingName = "Intel";
ByteOrder = little;
ListInEnum = NO;
SortNumber = 105;
},
with
{
Type = Architecture;
Identifier = i386;
Name = Intel;
Description = "32-bit Intel";
"PerArchBuildSettingName" = Intel;
ByteOrder = little;
ListInEnum = NO;
SortNumber = 105;
},
{
Type = Architecture;
Identifier = ppc;
Name = "Minimal (32-bit PowerPC only)";
Description = "32-bit PowerPC ";
"PerArchBuildSettingName" = PowerPC;
ByteOrder = big;
ListInEnum = No;
SortNumber = 201;
},
{
Type = Architecture;
Identifier = ppc7400;
Name = "PowerPC G4";
Description = "32-bit PowerPC for G4 processor";
ByteOrder = big;
ListInEnum = NO;
SortNumber = 202;
},
{
Type = Architecture;
Identifier = ppc970;
Name = "PowerPC G5 32-bit";
Description = "32-bit PowerPC for G5 processor";
ByteOrder = big;
ListInEnum = NO;
SortNumber = 203;
},
Now go ahead and start Xcode and when you select the "File > New Project..." menu item, you should see a darling iPhone category for projects. Also, run the iPhone simulator in /(Xcode install path)/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/Applications/iPhone\\ Simulator.app, it's really mind-blowing to run it on your desktop, especially one Apple tells you isn't able to run their iPhone SDK.
End of Article-------------
I use this and it works great. Here's a screenshot of my computer running the iPhone Simulator 2.2.1 to prove that this actually works.
You should really use this if you're stuck on a PPC and want to make iPhone apps. It works Great!
Well, according to Movable Type, we not only need ImageMagick, but we also need PerlMagick. Well, we installed MacPorts to the server and tried to install ImageMagick+Perl. This is supposed to install PerlMagick and ImageMagick, but it didn't. So, we tried to install p5 PerlMagick, which is apparently broken according to the creator. Bummer!
Still working on a fix.
All for Now!
Well, after upgrading to Movable Type Pro v.4.261 and installing ImageMagick, Movable Type says that it is not installed. It is also not recognizing our install of the GD libraries. So, I can't use the Userpics feature or the image previews because Movable Type cannot find imagemagick. Of course, the server management tool says that it is indeed installed, but Movable Type says different.
We're working on a fix, and I'll tell everyone what to do if they have the same problem.
All for now...
I just upgraded my blog to Movable Type Pro v.4.261. I haven't noticed anything significantly different than the previous version, though if I do, I'll let you all know.
All for now...
Well, when I made the switch to Google for email, my Google Apps standard account came with Google calendar. I had this service active on my existing google account, however I hadn't used it at all. I figured that I should use it just because it's there. Like all things, just because it's there. I found an application that google has made called calaboration that automatically adds your calendars to iCal with updating and automatic syncing. It's so easy!
Also, with this email switch, I have started to use Google Notifier. This allows you to check your email without opening Safari or Entourage and does it on a 10 minute basis. The refresh interval is changeable. It also interfaces with google calendar to remind you of upcoming events. Taht's a really useful feature.
All for now!
Previously, I had been running my Email off of my own server, where this site currently lives. To reduce the workload on our server, we migrated all of the email handling to Gmail. Well, that seemed like it would be harder than not, but it was really quite easy. All I had to do was to get a free Google Apps Standard account, which google does a good job of hiding from the public, and change the MX records on my site to point to Google. Now, all my email goes to Gmail, and I don't have to deal with it anymore. That's really nice.
That's all for now...
In my search for a good way to learn how to develop for iPhone, I have been directed to iTunes U. I then found an excellent podcast on iPhone development made by Stanford university. I highly recommend this podcast if anyone needs to learn development for iPhone.
