Puerto Ricans began to ask Amazon to give them Amazon Prime. Amazon, please think of us! And so Amazon did. And it didn’t like what it found: a computer glitch was allowing us sneaky Puerto Ricans to benefit from free Super Saver shipping! And it was fixed.

Fouts said those addresses slipped under the radar "due to a bug in the system that was recently fixed."

"I don’t know what the reason is for not offering the free shipping option to Puerto Rico or the territories, but that’s always been our policy," Fouts said, unable to confirm the exact date the "bug" was fixed.

Now, a few months later, the Consumer Affairs Department, known as Daco, after initially threatening to sue Amazon, is fining them:

The Consumer Affairs Department has issued a fine against online retailer Amazon for failing to reasonably support its decision to take the "Super Saver" free shipping benefit away from Puerto Rico consumers, News is my Business learned Tuesday.

The initial $340,000 fine lodged two weeks ago is currently hovering at about $500,000 and will increase by $10,000 a day as long as the case is open, agency Secretary Luis Rivera-Marín said.

Okay. So we are now fining Amazon for not providing a free service on the basis that it discriminates against Puerto Rico consumers. Uh, guys, you might want to lay down the nationality card - Hawaii is also excluded from Amazon’s Free Super Saver Shipping.

Another thing you might want to look into: Puerto Rico consumers can actually get Free Super Saver Shipping! All they have to do is sign up for Amazon Prime for $79 a year. Yes, Amazon Prime is now available in Puerto Rico. The only difference is that, instead of free two day shipping, we get Free Super Saver shipping back. Wait - they are now charging for something that used to be free? The nerve! How dare they!

I signed up for Amazon Prime anyway - the first month is free - and made a couple of orders. Huh, what do you know, this Free Super Saver shipping order is being shipped by UPS 2nd Day Air. Nah, that was a mistake. Let’s try again. ParcelPool? What the heck is ParcelPool? Ah! It’s USPS Parcel Post - and it made it to my front door in two days.

Turns out Amazon Prime is actually using two day shipping even for Puerto Rico. My theory is that they won’t advertise it as such, because things could change and they might need to fall back to USPS’s Priority Shipping (what they almost always used for Free Super Saver shipping back in the day). By advertising Free Super Saver Shipping as part of Amazon Prime and not the two day shipping they actually use, they are protecting themselves from being fined by the likes of Puerto Rico’s Consumer Affairs Department. Aw, crap. Too late.

I think that, instead of threatening with lawsuits and issuing fines just because we don’t get the same services for free as the other states do, we should actually focus on what we can’t currently get at any price. Amazon will not ship electronics and household goods to Puerto Rico:

Some items from our Tools & Hardware, Electronics, and Outdoor Living stores can’t be shipped to Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico if they are extremely heavy, oddly-shaped, or considered hazardous. Additionally, some items from our Health and Personal Care and Grocery stores cannot be shipped to these destinations. Check the item’s product detail page for eligibility and available shipping options. Only specific shipping options may be available for some addresses. Available shipping options will appear at checkout when you enter a shipping address.

In addition to these shipping restrictions, we also can not make use of Amazon Instant Video, which is one of the perks of Amazon Prime:

You may watch Amazon Instant Video from Hawaii, which also gets offered free Super Saver shipping as part of Prime instead of two day. It’s only Puerto Rico that is being restricted, since we are a territory. Tell me why, then, won’t the Consumer Affairs Department open an investigation into why Amazon’s content deals exclude territories such as Puerto Rico, while still being available in the District of Columbia? No, it rather chose to fine Amazon because it won’t offer us a free service.

While we’re on that topic, other retailers have brought up the Electronics Export Information declaration as one of the reasons they do not ship to Puerto Rico. It looks like whatever systems they set up to handle orders in their warehouses don’t account for these extra documents that need to be filed when shipping to Puerto Rico through UPS or FedEx. Filing these papers for one order by hand is a minor annoyance. Taking care of hundreds or thousands of orders a day that need EEI papers filed is not. The EEI declaration requirement was introduced in 2008, where were our legislators back then?

Shipments going back and forth between one of the 50 U.S. states and Puerto Rico must be treated like any other “international export” under the EEI/SED requirements. On the other hand, cargo headed to American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and most of the other U.S. territories are treated as “domestic” and do not need an EEI/SED.

See that? American Samoa, Guam and other U.S. territories are excluded from having to declare an EEI! Puerto Rico is specifically treated as an “international export”. That’s a federal government requirement. What’s Hon. Pedro Pierluisi, our Resident Commissioner in Washington, D.C., doing about it? Oh, right, he’s sending letters to retailers. Mr. Pierluisi, you might want to talk to your friends in Washington about that little EEI that is being used as a pretty valid excuse not to include Puerto Rico as a domestic shipping location.

Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi this week put the spotlight on some of the most popular online retailers, asking them to explain why they will not ship to Puerto Rico arguing among other things that the island must abide by the same federal trade and consumer protection laws as all of the 50 states.

Kenneth McClintock, Puerto Rico Secretary of State, maybe you could send that information over to Pedro Pierluisi?

@hectorramos @gabrielrodz @pedropierluisi Regl. USCensusBureau requiriendo a shippers el Electronic Export Information-EEI no aplica a USPS

— Kenneth McClintock (@PRSecState) January 5, 2012

Barcamp Mayagüez is open to everyone, just make sure to confirm your assistance on Facebook.

As a programmer, I’m reading documentation in English all day. I’m writing function names in English, catching up with the latest startup news in English, reading Hacker News, TechCrunch, TechMeme, and PandoDaily. My favorite books are all in English – as a very young boy, I would pick up my dad’s John Grisham novels as soon as he was done reading them. I’d always go for The San Juan Star over El Nuevo Dia. I learned to program at a very young age by reading books written in English and asking for help on newsgroups. I even blogged for an English language website when I was 13, even though that word didn’t exist until almost 5 years later.

That leaves local news and my friends’ updates as the only things I might read in Spanish in a normal day. Not the best way to improve my written Spanish, I’ll admit, but that’s the way I grew up.

I’m more comfortable reading and writing in English. Not only that, I want to improve my writing. I might be good at catching spelling mistakes and most grammar mistakes, but I was never good at writing prose. So I’ll just have to keep writing in English and practicing until I find my voice.

Having stated my personal preference, let’s talk about reach. If I were to write in Spanish, my audience would mainly be composed of local folk, plus people from Spanish-speaking countries. Not a small audience, but Puerto Rico is a bilingual country. We are taught English since kindergarten. It’s all around us. English shouldn’t bother us. I don’t feel like I’m excluding anyone from Puerto Rico by writing in English. On the other hand, by writing in Spanish I would be excluding fellow programmers, potential business partners and future employers.

We’re a small island in the Caribbean. By definition, we are isolated. Why isolate ourselves even further, by restricting our online presence to Spanish?

The ports.

Sony just announced their latest “Ultrabook” prototype laptop, and while it is behind glass, the lackluster build quality is obvious. Look at those ugly, nasty ports. Why is there a VGA port in an ultrabook? That VGA port, along with the Ethernet port, add too much heft to the laptop. They probably could have made the laptop half as thick just by getting rid of those two ports. In order to do that, you need to also use half as much internal volume for your motherboard, memory and storage, which judging by the outward appearance, I don’t think Sony tried slimming those down anyway.

It’s not just about the thickness, though. Look at the audio out, the smallest of all the ports. What’s wrong with it? That black rubber all around it. Is it necessary? Now you have one rubber port, leaving a gap between it and the chassis. Same with the HDMI port. There’s a metal border around the port, in addition to the actual laptop chassis. Note that the VGA port is the worst offender when it comes to this. It just looks shitty, there’s no other way about it.

How does Apple do it? All the ports are built into the chassis. It’s all streamlined, no gaps, no rubber parts poking out of the laptop. And no ugly, outdated, VGA port.

These are the ports on the 13” MacBook Air. If you need HDMI, you plug in a Mini-DisplayPort to HDMI cable into the Thunderbolt port. Need VGA? There’s a Mini-DisplayPort to VGA cable as well. The small Thunderbolt port has replaced a huge, ugly VGA port with no sacrifice made when it comes to function and design. The audio port is flush with the chassis. It just looks good.

This is not new to the MacBook Air, however. All unibody Apple laptops have the same basic port design. It’s been this way since 2008. Hasn’t Sony noticed this?

And that’s just one of the reasons I’ll never buy a Sony laptop again. (Another being that my Sony VAIO got a busted audio out port within three months of purchasing it.)

The startup community in Puerto Rico is still very, very young. It’s almost non-existent. I’ve met a few people here and there over the last few years, and we generally keep in touch, but it feels like we’re all alone in this island. Local higher education institutions don’t do much about promoting startups, leading graduates instead towards the big companies, local or out of state. Who can blame them, though? A cushy job at a big company is a safe bet.

It’s time to kickstart this community. It won’t happen quickly. We won’t be able to compete with Silicon Valley. But maybe we can plant the seed, share our vision with others. Eventually the idea will take hold, and people will realize that working for a big company is not the only way of making a living. We need more entrepreneurs in this island, and we believe that technology startups hold the key for improving our economy.

Initial costs have gone down so much in the last decade, it’s very inexpensive to get started. Look around and you’ll notice many business models being disrupted. Digital distribution has forever changed the face of the movie and recording industry. Netflix and iTunes, Hulu. Zipcar, Uber and Getaround are threatening the transportation industry. Even Facebook, with its complete dominance of the social networking space, has enough blind spots that companies such as Twitter and Path, and Google’s Google+, can exist and be sustained by a significant chunk of users.

It’s a no-brainer: pick any industry. It can be disrupted, and the key lies in using the latest technology advancements combined with great design and a great user experience.

What can we do to get the ball rolling? It’s up for discussion. That’s why we invite you to join Startups of Puerto Rico, a new joint effort between various local startups. Everyone is welcome to add their own company to the index and join the Google Groups discussion mailing list. We aim to establish a a community where everyone has a voice and everyone can stay in touch. 2012 will see many more events such as Barcamp San Juan and Startup Weekend Puerto Rico. We have met many of you through these events, and we know there’s many more of you out there. We invite you to introduce yourself.

Check out El Web for the original announcement and more information about Startups of Puerto Rico.

Although tickets are no longer available, we’re happy to announce that we will be streaming TEDx San Juan live, starting at 8 AM EST tomorrow morning. Please join us for just over a half day of TEDx talks and artistic performances.

We will be using the inverted Aeropress method. Why? I don’t know. Some people prefer this over the normal method, since it keeps the paper filter away from the coffee until its needed. Some people like to run some water over the paper filter beforehand (they say doing this will keep your coffee from having a paper-filtery-taste, which I’ve never noticed anyway), and doing this with the regular method will result in coffee leaking out prematurely. I prefer it because its less messy and its all self-contained. Lets begin.

There’s two main parts to an Aeropress: the cylinder that holds the grounds and water, and the plunger. Normally you’d mix everything in the main cylinder, and then use the plunger. Instead, grab the plunger and push it in just one centimeter or so. Place the Aeropress upside down, with the plunger holding up the main cylinder. Leave the filter off for now.

Measure two scoops of ground coffee into your inverted Aeropress. Boil some water while you’re at it. Since I’m brewing this at the office, I’m using an electric kettle. At home, I have a metal stovetop kettle.

Done boiling that water? Set it aside. Give it 30 seconds or so. You want to brew the coffee at 175 degrees Fahrenheit. It all depends on your setup, but I’ve found that the water in the electric kettle takes around 30 seconds to drop to 180 F, and considering it might drop a few more degrees once its poured, thats when I like to commence brewing. Using my stovetop kettle, it takes more like a minute, enough to finish serving breakfast.

Pour water into the Aeropress until it’s half-full. Now stir it up for 10 seconds, no more, no less. Top it off with more hot water and wait 30 seconds. Get the paper filter ready.

Screw the filter in, invert the Aeropress unto your mug, and push down on the plunger. Don’t force it. Take it easy. Relax. Smell the coffee. Ahhhh.

That’s it! Coffee’s ready. You may now drink it, or proceed to ruin it with your dairy and sugar of choice.

Cleanup is easy: throw away the puck, and rinse the plunger. No need to wash anything else, it’s pretty much self-cleaning.

Some people say these are too many steps. Well, it looks like that when you first read about the process. Once you’ve done it once or twice, it’s real easy to just go through the steps without thinking about it. Here’s a recap:

1. Boil water.
2. Add two scoops of ground coffee to inverted Aeropress.
3. Pour hot water up to half point. Stir for 10 seconds.
4. Wait 30 seconds.
5. Screw in filter and push down on plunger.
6. Drink!

Curious about the Aeropress? Here’s a handy Google Image Search for inverted Aeropress.

This is hard to say, but I wish they had believed in me less. Encouraged me less. Supported me less. I wish someone, anyone, had put a stop to my foolish ideas. I’m incredibly confident and stubborn. I believe I can do anything. So additional support is kind of wasted on me. What I really needed is someone that could break through my confidence and tell me straight that I was being an idiot.

I stumbled across this post by Jason Freedman in this week’s Silicon Valley Startup Digest. Nice timing, given that I spent this past weekend advising groups of entrepreneurs who were building new products during Startup Weekend Puerto Rico. I listened to a variety of ideas, both good and bad, and I think I could have done a better job of letting them know when an idea just wasn’t good enough.

Its hard to look someone in the eye and tell them their idea sucks. You can see their passion, you want them to get inspired and build amazing things, so you hesitate to shoot them down. Since the startup culture in Puerto Rico is still so young, I think I’m being too careful as to not scare people away. I may also be tilting to the nice side, since I’m also working on a variety of projects, some of which have failed, some of which are still to take root, so who am I to tell others what works and what doesn’t?

Honest, critical feedback is what really separates an entrepreneur from someone who is just getting started. You can see it during the startup pitch competitions and Y Combinator office hours, you may have even experienced it yourself while pitching an angel investor or VC (as rare as they are here in Puerto Rico). A good adviser can identify pain points and potential issues as soon as you start talking about your idea. A quick 5 minute conversation with such an adviser can turn around your whole idea and save you from working for weeks on something that is not going to work out. As Jason states in his post, the market is not going to be nice to you.

This past weekend, Puerto Rico had its first official Startup Weekend event. The premise was simple: launch a startup in 54 hours.

Welcome to Startup Weekend Puerto Rico! from Dana Montenegro on Vimeo.

Over 50 passionate designers, developers, business development and creatives met on Friday night and pitched dozens of ideas. Every one got to pick their top three ideas and quickly assembled into seven teams. Their goal: have a fully developed business model and a prototype ready by Sunday evening, where each would pitch a panel of angel investors and venture capitalists and take a chance at winning thousands of dollars in prizes and in-kind services.

Our hosts were the incredible team from Seriously Creative, an amazing space designed to nurture creativity and inspire groups of people, located in Cupey Alto. Giovanni Collazo and José Padilla, the team behind Blimp and organizers of Barcamp San Juan, joined up with Ramphis Castro and Marcos Polanco, hosts of last year’s “Startups on a Global Stage”, to take on the challenge of organizing Puerto Rico’s Startup Weekend debut. Ramphis served as the Facilitator, and along with Dana Montenegro and his team at Seriously Creative, they were able to deliver a top-notch quality event.

Along with the organizers, a team of advisers and mentors was on hand during the weekend to help each team with product development, marketing, design, legal assistance, and business model development. Edgardo Jimenez, Ivan Rios, Rocío del Mar, Omar Ramos, Pablo Lopez and myself made up this team of advisers, with Paulo da Silva and Toni Gemayel as mentors.

Once the seven teams had been finalized, they each got set up in their own open office. At Seriously Creative there is an abundance of fun and quirky settings, and with all the food and drinks taken care of, teams were pretty much set for the weekend. We the advisers made our rounds through each office, listening in on the brainstorming that was taking place as each team honed down their chosen idea. By the end of the night, most teams had already settled on a game plan that was to be iterated on and executed during the rest of the weekend.

By midday Saturday, advisers started hosting office hours, with each of us sitting down with teams for blocks of half an hour to discuss how each would develop their product, build a prototype, and monetize it.

Sunday morning came and it was time to get ready to have something presentable for the judges: Toni Gemayel, Carlos Garcia, and Guillermo Bermudez. They were presented with these seven products:

Help Now!

A mobile app that incorporates a panic button used for alerting close contacts during an emergency. It’s timed location tracking kicks in if you fail to check in once you’ve made it to your car after a scary walk through a dark parking lot, as an example.

FAQ.ly

A hosted Q&A solution that incorporates message board style conversations and makes use of SEO to help drive users to your main product.

GameBoost.me

Mobile game app framework that emulates old-style arcade ticket dispensers and enables gamers to exchange them for real world prizes. Developers who incorporate this framework will be able to monetize their games by selling tickets themselves using in-app purchases.

Emagine.it

Imaginary getaways for kids. Buy a ticket for an amazing adventure to the North Pole and experience it as if you were there yourself through the virtual world in your mobile device.

Table Order

Waiters, ditch the pen and pad, and use your iPhone to send orders straight to the kitchen. No more walking back and forth from table to kitchen.

Tipbell

Provide immediate feedback to companies about their employees. Positive feedback is exposed and great employees are rewarded immediately. Geared towards the tourism industry, specifically taxi cab companies, its aim is to improve the experience for all tourists.

Social Time Clock

Geolocated social network built around venues and close groups of friends. Track where your inner circle is hanging out, and interact and make friends at each venue using the in-app chat system which can only be used by those nearby.

Each presentation was followed by a round of Q & A from the judges. Once the presentations were over, the judges convened to decide upon a winner. Each team was given three votes to give to another team, as a way of picking the People’s Choice winner. Two teams ended up in a tie, so advisers were brought in as a tie-breaker, with Table Order being picked as the winner.

Soon enough, judges were ready to announce the winner of Startup Weekend Puerto Rico:

Tipbell!

Congratulations to the Tipbell team for winning Startup Weekend, we are looking forward to seeing this product launch!

As winners of Startup Weekend Puerto Rico 2011, the Tipbell team gets:

1. $24,000 in Rackspace hosting
2. $40,000 in Legal consulting (incorporation, founder documents, etc)
3. $10,000 in Marketing consulting (SEO/SEM, Social Media, etc)
4. $200 in AWS credit
5. $50 Twilio credit
6. Access to apply to Startup Labs
7. $10,000 in Business Model consulting

To the rest of the teams, don’t stop. Keep working on your product - it can be the same one you came up with this last weekend, or you can choose to focus on a new direction. Just don’t stop. Keep working, keep trying new approaches. Hopefully everyone has learned new skills this last weekend that will help them come up with a successful business.

I’m really proud of the team behind Startup Weekend Puerto Rico. Something big took place this past weekend in Puerto Rico. Our startup community is still nascent, but its getting there. Its now up to all of us to keep the ball rolling and get the startup ecosystem built up.

Check out Seriously Creative’s Facebook page for more photos! Edgardo Jimenez wrote an insightful post that touches on the demographics, perseverance, performance and delivery of this special group of people at Startup Weekend Puerto Rico.

UPDATE: The original post mentioned this being the second Startup Weekend Puerto Rico event. I’ve just been informed that the similarly-named June 2009 event was not an official Startup Weekend event. This post has been corrected to highlight this fact.

If you’re in Puerto Rico for the weekend of October the 14th, be sure to check out Startup Weekend Puerto Rico. You’ll have just 54 hours to build a business by teaming up with entrepreneurial people from various backgrounds.

Startup Weekend is being organized by my friends Giovanni Collazo, José Padilla, Ramphis Castro, and Marcos Polanco. This core team is heavily involved in pushing Puerto Rico hard towards entrepreneurship. And what better place to exercise your product marketing, design and development muscle than Seriously Creative, an amazing space built specifically for nurturing ideas and helping teams rally into action.

Tickets for Startup Weekend are only $75 through today. You may also sponsor one lucky entrepreneur for $100. Sponsors can feed these hungry entrepreneurs for $500, or go big for $950. Enough talking, who can actually execute? We’ll see come October 14.

Netflix did not say how much it plans to charge for the service.

I’ve been streaming Netflix content all weekend long. Let’s hope this doesn’t mean that the $7.99 plan will cease to be in Puerto Rico (via Gabriel Pagan).

The time is finally here: Netflix Watch Instantly, the video streaming service, is now available in Puerto Rico. One of the very first posts in this website was regarding the unavailability of Netflix in Puerto Rico, as you may remember. We can now put that issue to rest, as Netflix sent out an email to all of its Puerto Rico customers, announcing the fact that Watch Instantly is now available again.

Many thanks to Edgar Rodriguez for letting us know about the email. No longer being a Netflix customer, as I had cancelled my service in 2009 when they blocked Watch Instantly in Puerto Rico, I didn’t receive the email. I don’t know what led to Netflix reenabling Watch Instantly - I had already given up on them. I know many people cancelled their accounts, but many more just used proxies, VPNs and other workarounds, judging by all the comments and emails I have received over the last two years. Personally, I believe that any company that makes it hard for me to use the service I am paying for, does not deserve my money. So I cancelled my service instead of jumping through hoops to get it working.

I think the most simple explanation is that Netflix finally got it all sorted out. Hulu Plus, iTunes Rentals and Xbox Video Rentals already work in Puerto Rico, with pretty much the same VOD catalog, so why would Netflix be any different? Well, they do have a physical DVD rental service, with its own availability windows. If their licensing contracts for streaming were somewhat tied to the physical rental licensing they already had in place, it is not too much of a longshot to theorize that Netflix couldn’t just switch over from one day to the next and have all contracts in place. Just this past weekend, Turntable.fm blocked International users and Puerto Rico was caught in the block, even if for a couple of hours. Even Amazon places various restrictions on the goods they can ship to Puerto Rico, although we are eligible for their Super Saver free shipping.

As much as we would like everybody to treat us like the United States territory that we are, the fact of the matter is that we are a nation stuck in limbo: not fully a State, not fully a sovereign nation. Until we get that sorted out, we can only expect more misunderstandings and different interpretations of copyright, trademark and cabotage laws.

Objectify is an indispensable addition to an Objective-C programmer’s toolbelt. It’s pretty simple, actually: feed it some JSON, and it will spit out a set of classes all ready to handle that JSON. Be it for quick prototyping, or for actual use in your app, this effectively saves you all the time it would take you to wire up your base classes. It’s simple but tedious work that can now be taken care of with a few clicks.

Objectify has quickly found a spot in my development routine. For example, I used Objectify last night to write a Wufoo forms wrapper in 20 minutes using the documentation’s sample JSON payloads. I am also using it in an upcoming app that Polsense is working on.

Get Objectify today on the MAS or buy it directly from tigerbears. You may also Objectify updates on Twitter @objectifyapp. Congrats to Bill Kunz for shipping this great app!

I’ve also been working nights and weekends on another app that saw the light this week: EyeTour. From the makers of Puerto Rico’s premier video guide, the EyeTour iPhone app helps you explore the island of Puerto Rico on the go.

Both projects have been a huge part of my life for the last year. I hope you enjoy them. There’s more coming real soon. Polsense has been working on another iOS application for the last six weeks, but we are not ready to say more at the moment. I’m also working on another iOS app, which reminds me: TEDxSanJuan will take place this Fall. We’re working on getting the final website up and running, but until then, TEDxSanJuan Speaker Nominations ARE OPEN.

So what’s so special about these two games now? They don’t use PhoneGap or Titanium. They don’t even use a UIWebView. Instead, they bypass the iPhone’s browser altogether and use Apple’s JavaScript interpreter (JavaScriptCore) directly. All graphics are rendered with OpenGL instead of in a browser window and all sound and music is played back with OpenAL instead of… well, having no sound at all.

OK, this is a pretty cool trick.

Every six months I’d take a look at the scope of the Android, and decide if it was time to start really looking at it. At the last Quakecon I took a show of hands poll, and it was interesting to see how almost as many people there had an Android device as an iOS device. But when I asked how many peple had spent 20 bucks on a game in the Android store, there was a big difference. You’re just not making money in the Android space as you are in the iOS space.

We made more money than people may expect on the Doom RPG stuff. It’s just fun to develop on iOS. We’d show people what we were working on and they’d go “Oh, when are you going to ship that? And I’d say ‘next month’ and they’d go “Aww, I wanna work on an iPhone title.”

It’s hard to make a rational business decision to say I want to take resources from something else and put them on this. We did actually hire a person to be our Android guy, but it looks like he’s going to get stuck on iOS development!

I’ve said it before, I got into programming thanks to John Carmack’s work during the 90’s.

Let me know if you’re going to be in Austin this weekend for SXSW!

PS: I’ve been working on a new blog based on Jekyll. It’s almost done, but I don’t think it would be prudent to deploy it just before leaving for this trip. So that explains the lack of blogging - I keep telling myself I should wait until the new site is up!

Creating these OTA deployments used to be very tedious. I’ve been learning Rails this past week, and really liked the way Heroku allows you to git push to their servers to deploy. Last night, I wrote up some scripts to simulate this as close as possible. I’ll first go through the basics of OTA deployments, the meaty automation action is at the last section.

Over The Air Deployment Basics

Feel free to skip this section if you’ve been doing OTA deployments already. Automation details are further down the page.

The way this works is through the use of a manifest file and a specially formatted iTunes URL. An example manifest is as follows:

This is a standard ASCII plist — you may use the OS X Property List Editor, or launch your favorite text editor and copy/paste this into a new file. Change the ${###} values to whatever matches your application; use your own Info.plist as a guide for the bundle id, display name and version number, and choose a URL that matches the final public URL where your app will be available to beta testers. For example, you might own the http://google.com domain, so you’d decide to host future betas of the Google +1 iOS apps at http://beta.google.com/plusone/GooglePlusOne.ipa. This must be a directory that is open to the Internet, as your iOS device must be able to download the IPA file.

The manifest and IPA files are linked to from any web page of your own choosing. Just use the following URL format when doing so:

Here’s a full HTML file that you may use if you don’t have a mobile formatted web page just yet:

Just replace the Google +1 dummy data with your own.

Notice the beta_archive.zip link? That’s what we serve to Pre-iOS 4.0 users, since OTA is a 4.0 feature. This is a zip containing the IPA and mobile provision necessary for classic iTunes tethered installs.

Once you’ve done all of this, you don’t need to recreate these files unless the application version number, bundle id or display name change (they must match the values in your Info.plist file).

But Wait… How Do I Create an IPA?

Build and Archive an ad hoc distribution target. Won’t go into details, just make sure to use a development Ad Hoc distribution provisioning profile. I recommend creating a new Target just for these Ad Hoc deployments. This way you don’t have to change the Code Signing settings every time, plus it will allow you to run this build from the command line — the end goal is to automate this process, remember?

Here’s a screen cap from one of my apps:

No code signing entitlements, just a distribution provisioning profile that was created for Ad Hoc deployments in Apple’s iOS Provisioning Portal.

Once that’s set, just make sure your Ad Hoc target is active and then select Device (as opposed to Simulator) from your Xcode drop down:

Go to Build and select Build and Archive (if it’s gray, go back to the previous step and SELECT DEVICE, not Simulator):

After a couple of minutes, the Xcode Organizer will pop up. Search for your application under Archived Applications, and then select the latest archive. Feel free to assign it a name that is useful to you — in my case, I use the same git tag that was applied to this code before being pushed. Once that’s out of the way, select your archive and then click on Share. Select the same Ad Hoc provisioning profile that you used during the build, then save it to disk. This will generate the IPA file that you need for OTA.

Do I Really Need To Do All Of This Myself?

Well, yes, you need to Build and Archive, but you can then use iOS Beta Builder to create the manifest and HTML files necessary for OTA deployment. Yes, this is what I used to generate the above files. I could have told you initially, but then we wouldn’t learn anything new, would we? iOS Beta Builder is what I’ve been using for OTA deployments since last summer, and it works very well. It will generate all your files, after which you can just zip them up, upload to your website and extract them to their final location.

Enter Testflight

Another option, which I highly recommend, is to use Testflight. These guys have been working hard for months on creating the most painless way to distribute your beta deployments over the air. All you need to do is supply the IPA file, select your team members (use their email addresses) and they will receive a nice, mobile formatted email with the link to your IPA file. The link opens Safari, from where they can click on Install and — well, that’s it! The app is now installed.

Testflight has other nifty features. You may manage multiple teams within each of your application. Say, you have one or two other developers and designers working on your app, you may choose to send them all of the daily builds. You may have another team for the client and just send them the end of week progress builds. And the most important feature, whenever you add a new team member, they get an email where with one or two clicks they can get their UDID registered with Testflight, saving you the need to explain them how to extract it themselves. Testflight also provides a way to batch download all the UDIDs which you can then upload to Apple’s iOS Provisioning Portal and add to your Ad Hoc distribution profile.

Testflight really requires its own standalone review to do it justice. They are in closed beta at the moment (although they opened up their sign up during the holidays!). Wait for them to go public, contact them, or follow them on Twitter to snag your signup next time they open up again. Oh, and being invited to a Testflight team also gives you your own account, so that also works.

Another point goes to Testflight for providing an upload API, which is really useful for — you guessed it — over the air deployment automation.

Alright! Just Tell Me How To Automate All Of This Crap

Well, you need to do two things: automate your Xcode build, and then automate the IPA upload to your web server.

The first part is taken care of by the following script:

Change all the variables to match your own development environment. The end result, if successful, is the IPA file you need and love.

You may now create a simple script that scp’s the IPA to its final location in your web server, alongside the manifest.plist and index.html previously created with iOS Beta Builder. You should be able to do this easily, if not, then Google’s your best friend.

However, thanks to Testflight, you can just call this script once the Xcode build has been successful. It will upload the IPA to Testflight and automatically email your team members.

The team token determines which of your teams, within your Testflight configured apps, receives this deployment.

Since you’re an awesome code monkey, it shouldn’t be too hard to link these two scripts together so that the Archive name and comments are kept consistent with the Testflight notes.

My current deployment set up is an alias that first calls git push, and if successful, calls the build and archive script, which then in turn calls the Testflight deployment script.

Try it out, and let me know if this works out for you.

The iPhone 4 has a software HDR function which takes various pictures in quick succession, each with varying exposure levels, and merges them into a single composite which should have a higher dynamic range of colors (which your monitor probably can’t display properly, but done right, still looks better than a single exposure picture, but I won’t go into the details). The iPhone 4 also saves the original, single exposure picture in case you prefer it over the HDR.