Two years ago, I worked for a small web design agency in the Twin Cities and on one random night after work I built a little project.  A few months later I decided that I really liked making these little projects and made the call to leave my job and focus more time on my projects while doing contract work part time.

I had big plans.

And I started off strong.

But as the last two years have gone by, in order to make a living, I found myself working full time on contract work and having little time to apply to my own ideas.  And again, two years later, I have found myself seemingly in the exact same place again.

However, this time, one thing is different.  That little project I started 2 years ago has started to do something I never planned on: it started making money.  It’s not enough to quit working and live on an island and it’s not enough to cover my previous contract income, but it is enough to make me believe that I can finally get to where I wanted to be all along: making a living from users, not clients.

It is not going to be easy.  Yet, as nervous as I am to take this risk, I’ve found that in my short 25 years on this planet, I’ve never regretted doing something.  My only regrets have ever come from not trying something.  In the end, if I fall, I can pick myself up and try something else.

Idea Shower is coming back.  I’ll be launching the 2.0 version of Read It Later (which is going to rock, I’ll have you know), and then I’ll be moving onto 3 other projects I plan to launch within the next 6 months.

Stay tuned.

That piece of paper the clerk is about to hand me is going to get shoved into my pocket and is going to end up god knows where.  My desk, in my mail stack, in the lint trap, or discovered next winter when I pull my jacket from the closet again.  No matter it’s destination, it will have lived a fruitless life,  serving no purpose but to clutter my life.

A growing number of stores are beginning to ask the question: “Would you like your receipt?”  But the overwhelming majority still happily prints you this waste of paper.

Though these point of sale encounters vary, there is generally one common element: a place to run your credit card.

I rarely carry cash with me anymore, paying with a credit card is far more convenient.  And generally I am only using one card for all of these different stores.  What I’d like to see is either on the store side or ideally at the credit card level, a way to set your preferences for receipts and even bags.

What if the system knew when I swiped my card that I did not want a receipt?  I would not have to wait for it to print and I could be on my way with one less thing to throw away.

It’s so common that often when I’m browsing through the store and I find a game or an application that looks interesting, I’ll open up the search tab and look to see if they have a free version to try first.  This has saved me from spending money on some terrible games but also has lead me to purchase a ton of games that I got hooked on using the free version.

Since this has now become almost a standard for a lot of applications, I think the App Store can do a better job at bundling these free and paid versions together.  I’d like to skip the extra steps involved in having to seek out free versions whenever I find a cool app while browsing the store (especially in the new Genius section).

If developers were able to link free and paid versions together through iTunes Connect, Apple could then display a small shortcut on the paid version that lets users know there is a free version out there to try.  Even a small ‘Try It’ button underneath the purchase/price button would save a lot of hassle.

It would benefit users by allowing them an easier way to try out applications before dropping money on them.  It would benefit developers by giving them one more chance at hooking a customer who might have otherwise balked at the price at first.

Since a lot of users have said they wished other applications had this feature I thought I’d release the source code so that other developers could easily add it if they wish.

How to Use

Every app is going to be unique, so depending on how your application and it’s views are designed, this may or not be a quick drop-in.

I would start first by downloading and viewing the example project.

There are two parts you would need to integrate into your application.

1. Add the view controller additions to your UIViewController

Open OneTouchRotationViewController.h and OneTouchRotationViewController.m.  You will see the additional properties and functions I’ve added to the UIViewController.  In most cases, you can simply copy and paste them into your main view controller.

The example project has no extraneous methods or code, so you should carry over almost all of the code from the two files into your own.

Make sure you get:

• The definitions in the header (.h) file.
• The #defined degreesToRadians function at the top of the .m file
• The OneTouchRotation enum
• The synthesized properties line
• The hideLockAfterNumberOfSeconds constant
• All of the source for the rotation functions listed in the .m file

2. Add the rotation notification

Where you put this may again depend on your application.  If you open OneTouchRotationAppDelegate.m, you’ll see that I add it right when the application starts up.  This event tells your view controller when the device has been rotated.

3. Add the icon images

I provided the same icons I use in my own app.  Feel free to modify them if you wish.  You’ll want to add these to your own project by dragging both rotateUnlock.png and rotateLocked.png into your Resources folder in Xcode.

Test it out

If you get stuck, start by taking a look at the example project included in the download.

Download

One Touch Rotation Example Project and Source (1.0)

I received a brief email from Apple in early in August requesting artwork for a ‘potential marketing opportunity’.  The opportunity turned out to be Read It Later being featured in the Apple App Store.

The email came in late on a Tuesday and had requested artwork files for first thing Thursday morning.  In reality, this gave me about a day to put everything together and send it.

However, during that time I was scrambling to get some other work finished before I left for a trip at the end of the week.  There was no way I was going to miss the chance for whatever this opportunity was so I ended up having to  forfeit some other important tasks in order to make room for this.

It would have been much better if I had this work ready to go ahead of time.  In fact, details about having these files are in the ‘developer guide’.  The guide is linked to from the bottom of the iTunesConnect window and the details of the featured artwork are buried near the end of the PDF.  Admittedly, I had never seen it, and from the developers I spoke with, a lot of others haven’t either.

I wanted to share my experience so in case other developers were not aware of this they could be better prepared than I was.  Though it meant I had to put off some other work that week to put the files together, the result of being featured was definitely worth it.

The Requested Artwork

They request two artwork files.  The Apple designers will actually take bits/pieces from these and rearrange them as they see fit based on the image they are trying to create.  (More on that below)

Title Treatment - This is a 600 x 600 image of your logo/title.  The background should be transparent and it should exclude tag-lines if the text will not be legible at a small scale.

An example of the Title graphic for Read It Later is shown to the side.

Background Treatment - This is a 900 x 530 layered PSD.  What you put in this file is fairly open.  Apple states:  “The background image, texture, color or gradient should correspond to the application or compliment the title treatment. It may include elements of the application itself, but should not be or include screenshots.”

The approach I took was to provide them with a gradient background in one layer and then a main graphic that could accompany the logo.

My Submitted Artwork

Just as an example (you wouldn’t send this together), here is a close up of the combined artwork:

Apple’s Design

As I mentioned, Apple will take the artwork you send them and put it together in a way they see fit.  You should try to keep all the graphical elements in separate layers in Photoshop to make this easier for them.  If you have some graphic elements that must be laid out in a specific way, I’d suggest merging the layers so the designers do not break them apart as they will not consult you prior to the graphics being made.

Here are the three images that I saw during the time it was featured.  As you can see, they significantly rearranged the graphics I sent them.  (I think they turned out nice, just making the point that this may happen).

On the featured tab of the App Store App:

Big promo on the main App Store page in iTunes:

Mini promo on the main App Store page in iTunes:

Offmaps, in essence, is the iPhone’s native Google Maps application, that’s usable offline.  This means you can still use GPS on your phone to get around a foreign town without incurring insane international data roaming costs.

There were multiple occasions while walking around Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto that having the built in maps, gps, and compass on my phone were incredibly useful.

Again, the application is designed very similar to that of the native map application.  You are able to pan/zoom around the maps in the same way you would in Maps and the ‘find me’ button / compass view (on 3GS) works in the same manner.

Offmaps is very simple to use.  Before heading out of the country (or off of wifi), you drag a bounding box around the area/city you want to download, select the zoom max zoom level, wait for the maps to download and you’re done!  The app itself sets no limits to the number of maps you can download but it is obviously limited to the disk space you have available on your phone.

There are a few quirks with using Offmaps that you should be aware of.

The first one isn’t Offmaps fault, but if you are traveling abroad and do not have a data connection, you should know that it takes a very long time to get a GPS fix on the iPhone.  Normally, your phone uses the cell towers nearby to help find your location fairly quickly.  Without these, the phone has to rely strictly on the GPS satellites and this may take up to 10 minutes.  If your phone cannot find your position after the first try, just keep trying, eventually it’ll find you.  If you are in need of quick help and have some data to spare, turn on your data roaming, locate yourself, and then switch the data roaming back off.

The other issue is the maps.  Offmaps does not use the same maps provided by Google in the native Maps app.  It uses open source maps from OpenStreetMap.  These maps are not as up to date nor as detailed as Google’s.  This is understandable, but just be warned there may be some cases where you may not be able to discern where you are going just based on the map alone.  If you have some known locations ahead of time, I’d suggest dropping some pins and bookmarks on the maps to help you find your way when you are there.  Additionally, you might find it helpful to drop a pin when you get off the subway so you can find your way back.

The final issue was the search.  At the time of writing, it didn’t seem that this worked offline.  I would imagine making the search work offline would be very difficult due to the amount of data it would require but when you try to search offline, it does not prompt any messages or take any action after hitting ’search’.  So quite frankly, I’m uncertain of what the developers intentions are there.  Because of the lack of search, I did have to switch to the normal maps app and use my data roaming in a few instances when I needed to find a specific restaurant or location.

Overall, this application is invaluable.  If you travel or have a limited data connection, you need to have this app, period.

When your job does not tie you to one place, there exists the romantic possibility of breaking off the concrete and setting off wandering the globe.  The idea of traveling around the world, working from my laptop is a thought that I’ve always entertained but never executed.  Simply because as time has gone on, I’ve learned that a job is not the only thing holding you to the ground, there are other reasons to stay in one place, namely friends, family, and a sense of ‘home’.

Yet, travel is still my biggest interest, by far.  And if you know me personally, you know that it’s just about the only thing I spend my money on.  I don’t spend money on gadgets, big screen TVs, cars or clothes (I own about 5 shirts, half of which are probably a few years old).  So as the first-year-of-business-craziness has started to level out, I’ve had time to revisit this travel dream.

This past week I returned from a 2 week trip to Japan. It was the longest trip I’ve taken since I started Idea Shower and began working for myself.  More importantly, it was the farthest away I’ve been from my primary computer, a (less insanely expensive) data connection on my iPhone, and work life that I am accustomed to.  It was a great way to peer behind the curtain of the globe-trotting, laptop-carrying worker I’ve long dreamed to be.

Data

As much as I’d like to run free, there is one cable that you can’t let go of as a web developer and that’s an internet connection.  I think without a doubt, this is the biggest hurdle I see to a mobile work life:  It’s incredibly expensive.

AT&T offers 50MB of international data for $60/mo and good luck if you go over,  because at $0.005/KB viewing the homepage of Techcrunch once would cost you $2.50 alone.  50MB is hardly enough to get you through a month, and probably not even enough to get you through a day or two of solid internet use.

SoftBank, the major carrier of the iPhone in Japan’s prepaid SIM cards for international visitors were comparable in price as well.

In order to conserve my precious MBs, I kept my phone’s data connection disabled unless I absolutely needed it.  The result meant that during the day, while I was out and about, it was used primarily to keep tabs on things, while everything else was left for the morning and night where I could use the connection where I was staying.

Reverse Teathering

While in Japan I stayed at both a friend’s house and for a few days, a hotel.  At both locations, no wireless was provided, but instead a hard LAN connection.  This meant that I was still unable to use my iPhone without cracking open the data connection.  But with a laptop, I discovered that you can use it has a router to create your own wireless network from the hard line and use that to connect your phone!  I wrote a separate post on how to set that up here: Reverse Teathering

Offline Everything

The other way I conserved my data was by making use of the WiFi connection to download everything I’d need for the day.  For websites and train schedules I used Read It Later (shameless plug!).  However, the most important thing to have when traveling?  (Well, outside of a towel)  Maps.

With an iPhone, you get very accustomed to having an always accessible GPS in your pocket.  But with the limited and expensive data, you’ll surpass the cost of your college loans within minutes of panning around the Maps application.  The answer is an excellent little app called OffMaps which allows you to download maps for just about anywhere so you can use your GPS offline later on.  I’ve written a separate post about that here: OffMaps - Offline Maps and GPS

Batching

The whole point of traveling is, well, traveling.  Moving, getting out, seeing, doing.  But it’s difficult to do this when your work is piling up in front of you.  This is why it’s incredibly important to make your time count as much as possible.  While I was abroad I didn’t answer any emails or messages on Twitter until two specific times in the morning and at night.  Generally people are happy as long as they get a reply back within a day so the delays were acceptable.

By grouping everything together and tackling it all at once, it made getting through my work significantly faster.  During the time I was there, I never felt overloaded or feared things were not getting done.  By spending 1-2 hours in the morning and some time at night to clear my plate, it left the rest of the day for me to get out and play.

The Life

Sunrise from the top of Mt Fuji after an 8hr night climb.

The self employed life offers a lot of opportunities and the chance at a mobile life is certainly one of the most intriguing.  And as much as the idea of setting sail and not looking back sounds adventurous and almost cinematic, I believe the reality of it is far less doable.

Even though this trip was meant to be more vacation than work, it still gave me a sense of what that life may be like.  As romantic as it sounds, it does not provide the most stable or effective work environment.  More importantly, for a web based job, the fear of being disconnected is far to great.

For example, a few friends invited me to what sounded like an epic trip: spending several days at a ’surf island’ in Panama, where as you might guess, you can spend the entire time surfing on a remote-ish island.  But it’s impossible for me to even consider it because of the single cable wrapped around my leg.  It’s incredibly hard to be away from an internet connection for more than a day at a time.  Servers go down, opportunities arise and as a solo developer without employees, you are the only thing standing in the way of imminent issues.

I think, for now, launching mini trips from a home base is far more of a reality.  I’d much prefer to make the best of my time while traveling, then spend it working.  Using batching you can effectively get work done during travel, but you still need time in between trips to handle the big tasks and jobs.

The mobile work life is great but sometimes it’s nice to home docking station to come back to and recharge.

How do you stay connected while traveling?

The problem I came across however was I could not do an ajax request to send the link to the Read It Later server because cross-domain browser restrictions.

I could use an iframe to send the request, but again because of cross-domain issues, I would not be able to retrieve a response from inside of it.  After the request was sent, there were 3 possible outcomes: Success, the user needs to login, or there was a problem saving.

The method that eventually dawned on me is rather hackish, but it works none-the-less.  It provides a way to send a request to any domain and get a basic response.

The solution: Images are not subject to cross domain restrictions.  So load an ‘image’ with a get string that hits a script on the server and then returns an different sized image per possible outcome.

If that makes absolutely no sense, let me try to illustrate with an example that provides a response with two options: success/failure.

Starting the Request: (Javascript: Client Side)

Handling the Request (Server Side):

The image is now loading this script:

<?php

/* ... do your request processing here ... */

// Based on the result of the script, we either return a
// 1px wide image (in the case of success) or
// 2px wide image (in the case of failure)
// you'll need to create these images yourself

if ($success) {
        $file = file_get_contents( '1x1.gif' );
} else {
        $file = file_get_contents( '2x1.gif' );
}

// output the image
$length = strlen($file);
header('Last-Modified: '.date('r'));
header('Accept-Ranges: bytes');
header('Content-Length: '.$length);
header('Content-Type: image/gif');
print($file);

?>

Handling the Response: (Javascript: Client Side)

Back on the javascript side of things, we have our ajaxTimer checking to see if the image is loaded. Once the image loads, we’ll check the width.

function isImageLoaded() {
     if (ajaxImg.complete) {

         var w = ajaxImg.width;
         if (w == 1) {
              alert('Success!');
         } else if (w == 2) {
             alert('Failed!');
         }

         // Hide the image (even though you probably won't see it
        ajaxImg.style.display = 'none';

        // Stop the timer
        clearInterval(ajaxTimer);

     }
}

Simple Works Best

As you can see, this works well if you only have a few possible outcomes of the transaction or if you do not need to return a literal response like generated markup.

IE Woes

Surprisingly, this DOES work in IE6 and IE7, however there is a little bit of extra work. The url of the request you load into the src of the image has to have .gif in it. For example: ’script.php’ won’t work, but ’script.gif’ will. So to make this work you’ll need to add an Htaccess rewrite rule to redirect the script.gif to your script.php file.

90 Second Demo Video

Overview

LiftSift is a light-weight tool made to discover a user’s perfect skiing destination based lift-ticket price, vertical, distance, and a number of other options.

How It Came to Be

While trying to plan a ski trip with some friends I realized that there was no simple way to get an overall view of all the resorts in the US and what their prices were.  This meant that I’d have to first know of a resort, then Google it and look through their website.  Or at least pick a region, then drill down by state -> resort -> price.  Either way, both approaches were very slow.

I wanted it the other way around.  I wanted to be able to see what places had the best prices and I wanted to be able to filter out the small hills (<1000ft).  On top of that, I did not want to have to be limited to only the resorts I had heard of.

So instead, I spent a Sunday afternoon putting together the site and hand entering data and LiftSift was born.

Narrow It Down

LiftSift is dead simple, so there is not much more to explain!  Open it up and move some sliders around.  It’s easy to sift through the list.

Say you want to find a ski resort with at least 2000 ft of vertical, within a day’s driving distance for under $70 a day?  No problem.

Drag the price slider to show $0 -> $70, the vertical slider to 2000 ft+ and the distance slider to 0 miles -> 800 miles.  The list will automatically update to show you your options.

Contribute

Data is fully editable by any user.  Feel free to submit a new location or edit an existing one.