Notes from a wireframe world

Free replacement batteries for Apple iPods

Scott Herbert — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:25:32 +0000

Yes Apple has finally admitted some of its iPod batteries overheat and explode/catch fire.

However if you’ve got one of the affected iPods you’ll have to live in Japan to cash in on the “deal”. So while iPod’s the world over catch fire only the Japanese get replacements.

Hardly a great user experience having you iPod explode on you is it Apple?

Posted via email from scottherbert’s posterous

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Building Dynamic Websites Lecture 13 of 13 – Scalability

Scott Herbert — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 07:51:04 +0000

Today’s websites are increasingly dynamic. Pages are no longer static HTML files but instead generated by scripts and database calls. User interfaces are more seamless, with technologies like Ajax replacing traditional page reloads. This course teaches students how to build dynamic websites with Ajax and with Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP), one of today’s most popular frameworks. Students learn how to set up domain names with DNS, how to structure pages with XHTML and CSS, how to program in JavaScript and PHP, how to configure Apache and MySQL, how to design and query databases with SQL, how to use Ajax with both XML and JSON, and how to build mashups. The course explores issues of security, scalability, and cross-browser support and also discusses enterprise-level deployments of websites, including third-party hosting, virtualization, colocation in data centers, firewalling, and load-balancing.

By Harvard Universitys David J. Malan

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No go and build something wonderful…

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Android’s gain is Apples woe.

Scott Herbert — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 21:29:30 +0000

As the latest figures from Quantcast show, Android phones are gaining ground on Apples iOS, if this is down to the new batch of Android phones (which people say are faster then the iPhone 4) or Apples handling of antanagate it’s maybe too early to say. but either way it’s clear that the gain in Android popularity it mostly at the expenses of Apples iPhone.

Posted via email from scottherbert’s posterous

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Samsung Galaxy S Froyo update coming soon…

Scott Herbert — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:43:45 +0000

It’s been known for a while now that the Froyo update for the Samsung Galaxy S would be arriving in September, to the delight of all Galaxy S owners who have been casting envious glances over their shoulders at all the lucky HTC Desire owners who are already running it.

Now a video has leaked detailing some of the new features for the phone, which, along with the great range of Samsung Galaxy S accessories available, make the Galaxy S one of the best high-end smartphones out there.

Amongst these are an update to Android 2.2, an increase in speed, support for Flash 10.1, improvements in keyboard action (making one of the greatest on-screen QWERTY keyboards even better) and pinch-to-zoom control of the homescreen, making it easier to access and move between widgets and apps.

Samsung initially announced the news on their Twitter account:

"We’ve seen a lot of Q’s about the Froyo update; it’s currently in development & will be released for all networks at the end of September…"

That means that unlike with the Desire, where people with the SIM-free HTC Desire could get their hands on the update first, it will be rolled out to everyone at the same time.

It’s also a number of new features including.

Auto rotate screen lock

If iOS can have a screen lock built right into the multitasking bar, well, Samsung can stick one in the notification tray. We loved Samsung’s tweaks to the pull down tray in Android 2.1 on the Samsung Galaxy S (Wi-Fi toggles, music controls), but the option to lock your screen in portrait or landscape straight from it as well makes it even more helpful, particularly if you prefer to browse the web in a certain orientation (No, not like that).

Keyboard

The Samsung Galaxy S keyboard on Eclair/Android 2.1 is already one of the best Android onscreen QWERTYs out there, but the Samsung Galaxy S Froyo update appears to better it, by throwing in the option to pull up numbers and accented characters with a long press of a key, instead of having to toggle the numeric keypad. There’s no sign in this Samsung Galaxy S Froyo walkthrough of Swype in action, but we’d be surprised if Sammy chose to remove it entirely.

Contacts

A small but useful addition for Gmail power users: Gmail Groups now pop up in your contacts. Hooray!

Speed

This one’s difficult to call objectively, but the host for the Samsung Galaxy S Froyo update video says the build is noticeably faster than before, and “much improved”. We knew that Google’s back end changes meant Android 2.2 is much nippier, and it appears some of that speed has made it through to Samsung’s skin. Double hooray!

Posted via email from scottherbert’s posterous

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You think it sucks, that’s fine but why?

Scott Herbert — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:20:23 +0000

In the three days the the free version of sustainable fish has been in the Android Market place it’s been downloaded over 100 times, and people appear to be using it (my ad income has increased day on day) and I’ve had two reviews, the first person gave me 5 starts, the second 1 star, the first person didn’t leave a comment, the second did… it read “Suck”…

Well… thanks…

I don’t mind either review (I would however prefer to get more 5 star reviews then one star ones) they are however, for the same reason, pointless.

If either of you are reading this, please tell me why you love it and hate it? what works and what doesn’t.

I want to make great software, but I can’t do that if the people using it don’t tell me what they like (and what sucks).

So please if you’ve installed either version of sustainable fish, go to the android market place, go to the download section, find the app and tell me what good and bad about the app. No secondly don’t.

Secondly, find the link below the review section, click on my e-mail address and send me a quick note telling me what you think, that way I can enter into a dialogue with you about that you need/want the app to do.

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Building Dynamic Websites Lecture 12 of 13 – Security

Scott Herbert — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:49:51 +0000

By Harvard Universitys David J. Malan

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Sustainable Fish for Android, the free version – out now!

Scott Herbert — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 15:14:52 +0000

As well as the paid for app, Sustainable Fish is also available as a free, Ad supported app [Android market place link].

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Sustainable Fish for Android – out now!

Scott Herbert — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 19:51:23 +0000

Well firstly I’d like to say a big thank you to all the Beta testers that got back to me with their suggestions. you where a great help.

Secondly, Sustainable Fish [An Android market link] is now out it costs just 99p and can be downloaded from the Android market place now.

The app it’s self simply allows you to check on the sustainability of the fish you intend to buy before you buy it. It rates fish on a one to five scale (with five being the least sustainable).

UPDATE

There is also a free, ad supported version of Sustainable fish out.

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Sustainable Fish – Beta test sign-up form

Scott Herbert — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:46:06 +0000

Sometime soon (within the next few weeks) I’ll be releasing a new Android app called Sustainable Fish, the app lets you check if the fish you are about to buy is one that is sustainably fished or if it’s being fished to extinsion.

Before It’s released on the world via Android market place, I’m looking to Beta test it, that where you come in. If your interested in becoming beta tester for “Sustainable Fish” fill in the form below and I’ll give you a link to download the beta app in about a weeks time.

As well as e-mailing you the link to the beta version of the app, I’ll also (about a week after) e-mail you to fill in a survey. So I can improve the app. and finally I’ll add you to my e-mail list to let you know about new products (don’t worry it will be something like 1 email every 2-3 months, and you can always unsubscribe).

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Building Dynamic Websites Lecture 11 of 13 – AJAX (Cont.)

Scott Herbert — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 07:48:22 +0000

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Building Dynamic Websites Lecture 10 of 13 – AJAX

Scott Herbert — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 07:47:29 +0000

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send to phone with C2DM

Scott Herbert — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 09:13:12 +0000

[This post is by Dave Burke, who's an Engineering Manager 80% of the time. — Tim Bray]

Android Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM) was launched recently as part of Android 2.2. C2DM enables third-party developers to push lightweight data messages to the phone. C2DM created a nice opportunity for us to pull together different Google developer tools to create a simple but useful application to enable users to push links and other information from their desktop / laptop to their phone. The result was Chrome to Phone – a 20-percent time project at Google.

Chrome to Phone comprises a Chrome Extension, an Android Application, and a Google AppEngine server. All of the code is open sourced and serves as a nice example of how to use C2DM.

The message flow in Chrome to Phone is fairly typical of a push service:

1. The Android Application registers with the C2DM service and gets a device registration ID for the user. It sends this registration ID along with the user’s account name to the AppEngine server.

2. The AppEngine server authenticates the user account and stores the mapping from account name to device registration ID.

3. The Chrome Extension accesses the URL and page title for the current tab, and POSTs it to the AppEngine server.

4. The AppEngine server authenticates the user and looks up the corresponding device registration ID for the user account name. It then HTTP POSTs the URL and title to Google’s C2DM servers, which subsequently route the message to the device, resulting in an Intent broadcast.

5. The Android application is woken by its Intent receiver. The Android application then routes the URL to the appropriate application via a new Intent (e.g. browser, dialer, or Google Maps).

An interesting design choice in this application was to send the payload (URL and title) as part of the push message. A hash of the URL is used as a collapse_key to prevent multiple button presses resulting in duplicate intents. In principle the whole URL could have been used, but the hash is shorter and avoids unnecessarily exposing payload data. An alternative approach (and indeed the preferred one for larger payloads) is to use the push message service as a tickle to wake up the application, which would subsequently fetch the payload out-of-band, e.g. over HTTP.

The code for Chrome to Phone is online. Both the AppEngine and Android Application include a reusable package called com.google.android.c2dm that handles the lower-level C2DM interactions (e.g. configuration, task queues for resilience, etc).

Chrome to Phone is useful, but maybe it’s most interesting as an example of how to use Android C2DM.

Posted via email from scottherbert’s posterous

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What Google got planed for Thursday the 12th???

Scott Herbert — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:25:10 +0000

It appears that Google is getting ready to announce a couple new features for Android on Thursday at an invite-only event, according to an invitation received by Gizmodo. There is only speculation at this point about what might be announced, but whatever it is, events like this tend to generate lots of buzz, and high expectations.

There are a few things I can think of that may come up Thursday — my best guess is maybe the new Android Marketplace (with music, and a full web-based version of the market) is ready for prime time. Other guesses include a sneak peek of Gingerbread, or perhaps something completely different. Last time an event like this took place, Google’s Navigation app for Android was announced.

Curiously, it appears that the launch for Motorola’s next phone (Droid 2) is on the exact same day. Since it sounds like there are going to be “features” demonstrated, I don’t think it’s going to be specifically around Droid 2, but you never know I guess.

What is your best guess?

Posted via email from scottherbert’s posterous

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Building Dynamic Websites Lecture 9 of 13 – Javascript (Cont.)

Scott Herbert — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 07:45:54 +0000

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Microsoft unveils final IE9 preview build

Scott Herbert — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:47:44 +0000

Microsoft has pushed the fourth preview build of the Internet Explorer 9 web browser out the door.
This preview will be the last such build before the official beta is made available, which all being well, should be later next month.
Preview build 4 of IE9 brings with it fully hardware accelerated HTML5, and native JavaScript integration. [...]

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Brian Blessed tells you where to go on TomTom sat-nav

Scott Herbert — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:47:42 +0000

Brian Blessed is the latest celeb that TomTom has picked out to voice their sat-nav directions, alongside the likes of John Cleese.
And you might well think that an odd choice, given his loud and shouty voice. Is TomTom developing a special range of sat-navs to keep tired drivers awake with the volume of their vocal [...]

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Jailbroken or just broken?

Scott Herbert — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 16:38:18 +0000

If you’re an iPhone user with their finger on the pulse I’m sure by now you’ve heard of Jailbrakeme and know that it jailbreaks not just iOS4 but all other makes by… according to Mashable “simply by visiting the JailBreakMe website”.

Hang on! Just by visiting their site you can jailbreak an iPhone…

Something smells fishy here.

Before I continue let me clarify, I’ve not visited the site, nor do I have and iPhone (jailbroken or not) to test it out. Also I’m not accusing the people behind JailbreakMe of any criminal intent or behaviour.

That said…

Apple’s phone is locked up very tight, you can’t install anything on it that Apple doesn’t want you to. So how is jailbrakeing done? Well traditionally it’s been done by installing an altered version of the phones firmware. Effectively replacing parts of the operating system which amended version.

So how is it done over the web? Well again I’ve not tried it but it appears that by just accessing a website with you iPhone your able to update the operating system…

Let me say this again, by visiting a specially crafted website you’re able to change the operating system of your Apple phone…

OK as I said, I’m not saying the iPhone Dev Team have any underhanded intent, but if they can do that, then your iPhone can be tricked into installing any new update it including an update that uses your phone to send spam text messages, or sends you account details back to evil corp. ETC.

Posted via email from scottherbert’s posterous

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Building Dynamic Websites Lecture 8 of 13 – JavaScript

Scott Herbert — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 07:43:16 +0000

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Internet gets DNS security system upgrade

Scott Herbert — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:04:27 +0000

You can sleep safer and sounder in your virtual beds tonight, as the Internet is starting to become a more secure place.
This is due to the introduction of DNSSEC, or Domain Name System Security, which V3.co.uk reports that ICANN has announced at the Black Hat 2010 conference over in the States.
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Samsung Galaxy tablet will be out in September

Scott Herbert — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:04:26 +0000

Samsung has confirmed that its iPad challenger, the Galaxy tablet, will be out this quarter.
In other words, before the end of September, Reuters reports. The Android based tablet will come sporting a 7 inch screen, so a bit more compact than Apple’s magical effort.
It’s also likely to be running a 1.2GHz processor, backed up by [...]

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Notes from a wireframe world

Free replacement batteries for Apple iPods

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Building Dynamic Websites Lecture 13 of 13 – Scalability

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Android’s gain is Apples woe.

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Samsung Galaxy S Froyo update coming soon…

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You think it sucks, that’s fine but why?

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Building Dynamic Websites Lecture 12 of 13 – Security

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Sustainable Fish for Android, the free version – out now!

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Sustainable Fish for Android – out now!

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Sustainable Fish – Beta test sign-up form

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Building Dynamic Websites Lecture 11 of 13 – AJAX (Cont.)

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Building Dynamic Websites Lecture 10 of 13 – AJAX

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send to phone with C2DM

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What Google got planed for Thursday the 12th???

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Building Dynamic Websites Lecture 9 of 13 – Javascript (Cont.)

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Microsoft unveils final IE9 preview build

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Brian Blessed tells you where to go on TomTom sat-nav

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Building Dynamic Websites Lecture 8 of 13 – JavaScript

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