I’m very pleased today to announce the release of Capsule, the developer’s code journal. Capsule replaces the scratch document you have…
GameTonight now creates a module for Panic’s excellent Status Board iPad app. The URL is simple, add ‘/statusboard’ to any metro…
I’ve just released an initial beta of Threads, a WordPress plugin I’ve been working on for about a year. The idea is simple: show posts…
It took me four days to successfully sign up for MLB.tv. The first three days, I kept getting this: I tried different phone number formats. I tried to sign up with a credit card and via PayPal. I used different email addresses. I tried for three days. I recently started using 1Password instead of PwdHash.…
I came home this evening to non-working @centurylink DSL. I spent the next several hours on the phone with their tech support and the tech support for the NetGear modem. The CentryLink support insisted that my line tested fine and modem must have gone bad while I was at work. I thought this unlikely since…
Any time the digital version ($16.99) costs more that the physical version ($13.99), you’re Doing It Wrong.
I’ve been excited to try Sparrow on my iPhone since I saw it announced last year. I haven’t been a fan of the desktop app as I’m so hopelessly dependent on MsgFiler with Mail.app to support my email workflow, but I was hoping that Sparrow on the iPhone would be an improvement over the included…
Wondering what you can add to your iOS app to really annoy your users? Here’s a good way. Push out an update to your paid app that forces your customers to click through a splash screen advertising some new version of your app that won’t be available for 5 months! Force your users to click…
This sort of thing frustrates me to no end: Ms. Bates, your carefully chosen words say volumes. Not to confuse people with the facts, but not only does Twitter Tools give you fine grain control over your decision to send (or not send) each post to Twitter, it even has a feature that prevents posts…
There are few things that annoy me as much as the following scenario: Someone sends a message to me via a feedback form. I compose and send a reply. My message (the reply) bounces back because they mis-typed their email address. Sometimes I can look at the address and figure out what the issue was…
The iPad has sparked renewed interest in detachable keyboards, but to the surprise of folks who know me (and my attachment to physical keyboards on mobile devices) I’m not on board. I’ve been down this road before, with the Newton, the Stowaway keyboard for the Palm V series and the clip-on keyboard for the Palm…
For all the attention paid to mobile computing these days and all the progress that has been made, sometimes I feel like we’re going backwards in some areas. Customizable launch/home screens, input mechanisms, etc. The Palm Pilot had this capability back in the late 90s, the iPhone, Palm Pre etc. only have it via jailbreak…
The iPhone App Store has a lot of (well documented) problems, but on the flip side it has a very simple model that works like you expect it to. The BlackBerry App World is trying to provide a similar service for BlackBerry users, however BlackBerry developers are also able to distribute and/or sell their apps…
There has been a lot of discussion about WordPress and the GPL lately. People are discussing/complaining about what you can and can’t do due to the license. It’s all a bit baffling to me. Whether you like the GPL or not, the license is as much a part of WordPress as PHP and MySQL. WordPress…
Yesterday I got a $10 charge from PayPal when someone who had donated $1 to me ($.67 after PayPal fees) disputed the payment. Besides being obviously frustrating, this is also quite interesting. The e-mail I received from PayPal stated: After careful consideration of the evidence provided by you and the buyer in the case referenced…
I’ve adapted pretty well to the limitations of BES-less BlackBerry service over the last 11 months, but there are a few things about it that still irk me. The most bothersome by far is the way the BlackBerry handles read-receipt requests. Whenever an email is received on my BlackBerry that includes a read-receipt request, the…
Dear Covad– It’s your choice to hide your pricing behind a “give us your phone number” blockade on your web site. It’s my choice to be annoyed when you take that as an invitation to call me the next morning. Please lose my phone number. Regards, –Alex King
I’ve been subscribed to the Spanning Sync blog for a little while now, monitoring the progress they are making in their iCal to Google Calendar sync solution. Yesterday they released their first public beta – then quickly had to shut it down again. Frankly, I don’t understand why they choose to implement this as a…