Brandon Trebitowski

Tools of The Trade: What Tools I Use For iOS Consulting

2013-01-22T06:21:00-07:00

Welcome Hacker News! There’s some discussion happening in the comments; but, as always, the better conversation is on the article page on Hacker News itself.

Since going Indie, I am constantly asked about what software tools I use to facilitate the process. People are always curious about invoicing, time tracking, ticket management, etc…

The purpose of this post is two fold. First, I want to educate others on some of the cool tools I have found that have helped me out tremndously. The other is, I would hope that veterans in the space could give their two cents as to some better tools (or better use of the current one’s). Either way, I’d love to hear from you.

1. Tools For Finding Contracts

This is perhaps the area where I am most asked about. Well, the secret is, looking for contracts isn’t that much different than looking for a job. You just need to know what to look for. Here are the few major sources where I have found sucess in finding good contracts.

Linked In Jobs I love Linked In. I have found it to be the most valuable tool for job searches and connecting to date. I love that it will suggest jobs/contracts to you based on your profile and experience. Another great thing about Linked In is contract search can become passive if you are actively connecting and posting. Once your name starts flowing out there (assuming you have the exp), people will just start offering you contracts.
Authentic Jobs I like this site a lot. Their interface is much cleaner than some of the other job search sites and while they had fewer contracts available, they were generally of a higher quality. In fact, I found the current contract that I’m working on here.
Simply Hired Although this site generally offlinks to other sites, I found it to be a good aggrigator of what’s out there.
Good Ol Google This seems like a job, but as I mentioned in my last post, it’s pretty easy to type “[:field_name] contract work” and come up with a pretty good list.

2. Tools For Managing Clients/Billing

As a new contractor, the concept of billing can seem a bit scary. You don’t want to look like a n00b, but you also don’t want to spend a lot of money. That’s where FreshBooks comes in.

I started using FreshBooks from day one and could not be happier with their service. Here are some of the pros:

Free for up to 3 clients. It says 30 day trial, but that’s just if you want more than 3 clients. So it’s perfect for when you are starting out.
Manage multiple projects for mulitiple clients with multiple tasks (‘nuff said)
Mobile app. You haven’t lived until you have sent an invoice from your smartphone. You feel super businessy. For an added bonus, send it from the gym, or your sailboat.
It handles sending invoices via mail or email automatically and reports back to you when the client has seen the invoice.

Again, FreshBooks is awesome! I can’t recommend it enough.

3. Tools For Ticket Management

This one is tricky, because every client is going to want to work differently. Here are the few I have expereinced thus far.

Pivotal Tracker This one is my favorite. It’s a very easy to use tool to help facilitate development in an agile environment. Even if you are not running the full scrum process, it’s still a valuable tool to simply track your progress. Your clients will appreciate it.
Basecamp You knew I was going to say this one. It’s an obvious choice because it’s obvioulsy a solid tool. I think it’s very valuable when you have a distributed team and need a central way to communicate.

Even if your client doesn’t use a tracker, I’d suggest you use one. It helps you to keep organized and get a better feel for how long certain tasks take (which you will need to know in future scoping).

I dont’ have a very long list here because I hate most tracking software. If you have some to add here, I would love to hear about them in the comments.

4. Tools For Software Development

I am an iOS and rails developer, so this section may or may not be applicable to you. Again, I put this out there to let you know what I am using and would love to hear what you are using.

iOS

XCode (duh)
CocoaPods - If you don’t use CocoaPods, you are doing it wrong. They are what gems are to rails and really help you manage 3rd party libraries.
GitHub - For verison control and code distribution amoung the team. (again, you know this already).

Rails

Sublime Text I was big on TextMate for a while, but now I use Sublime Text full time. It has some solid plugins and can do a smart autocomplete for any file type.
Heroku Deploying rails to production sucks. Heroku makes this process easy.

5. Tools For Communication

Working in a distributed team can be hard at first. Especially staying connected. Here are the major forms of communication that I use.

Skype Although Skype has totally gone down hill since the MS takeover, it’s still a free service that most clients will use. I’d suggest if you don’t have a Skype account, you get one before job searching.
Google Voice This service allows you to forward a number directly on your cell phone. It also has some nicities like screening your calls, voicemail, free calls, etc… It’s good to give out your Google voice number instead of your cell to clients as well as possible girl/boyfriends in case things go sour.
Google Hangout Skype falls short in one area (which happens to be their business model). If you have more than 2 people on a call, they must all have a premium account to do video chat or screenshare. Google Hangout gives you all of these features for free with up to 10 people as of this writing.
Standard social networks (Twitter, Linked In, G+) (duh)

Conclusion

Well, this post is already getting a bit out of control. I could go on and on. If I have obviously omitted a large section, please feel free to troll me in the comments and I will certainly add it.

I hope this has been able to provide you with some value, and I would love to hear your thoughts.

What I Learned In My First Month Being A Contract iOS Developer

2012-12-29T14:54:00-07:00

tl;dr Present yourself to potential clients as if you have already made it. Don’t be scared, the work it out there. Freelancing FTW!1!

In the first week of December, I got a rather unfortunate (and unexpected) call from the CEO of the company I was working for. The gist of it was “we are reorganizing, and have decided to cut your position. Effective Immediately”. At this point, I was the Director Of Mobile Engineering and was making a very decent salary. While I was planning on leaving to go freelance at some point, I hadn’t dreamed it would be this sudden.

Well, it turns out that CEO did me one of the biggest favors of my life. He forced me to go indie. I probably would have flailed there for at least another year before even considering moving on.

I want to share a few things (good and bad) about what I have learned in the past month and how I will never (willingly) work for a company again.

Panic Sets In

I had been working at the aforementioned company for the past 4 years. In fact, it was my first job out of college. So, you can imagine how scary and stressful it was going from a steady paycheck to nothing in the blink of an eye. What’s ironic about this is, many people I have talked to since going indie have told me that they wish they could do it too, but really like the “security” of their corporate job.

At first, I freaked out a little and took the day off (I was “let go” in the morning). But, the very next day I hit the ground running in search of a contract.

Contracts, Contracts Everywhere

Much to my surprise, there are contracting opportunities everywhere. Again, I had to leave the company so soon, I hadn’t had time to research this myself beforehand. A simple Google search of “[your field] contract work” should reveal plenty (assuming your field is some sort of software. I can’t speak for other industries). I even started applying for salaried jobs as a contractor. You would be surprised how many companies are open to it.

This was immediately comforting.

Talk The Talk

My first few days of looking for a contract were pretty interesting. Being that I had just been let go, I felt this intense pressure to land a contract right away. This definitely came through in how I related to the recruiters and people I spoke with. My good friend Scott Caruso sat down with me and gave me some of the most important advice I would hear for dealing with potential clients.

You are looking for the “right opportunity”. If you are considering freelance, you obviously feel you are an expert (or close to) in your field and that definitely has value. Don’t settle for crappy contracts at crappy rates just because you need the money. You will hate life.
Spam! During my first week, I would contact one or two people and they said they would get back to me. Well, I didn’t want to possibly have to tell them no later, so I would politely not communicate with anyone else until I heard back. That was dumb. Finding contracts is like shopping at Goodwill. It’s mostly crap, but if you go through enough of the crap, you will find a gem.
Leverage your existing contacts. This should be obvious. I was holding off on this early on as I didn’t want to sound lame. However, these are the people you can show a little desperation to as they are (or should be) your friends. That being said, someone always knows someone else that needs some work done. If I hadn’t done this, I for sure would have violated #1.
You are a scarce resource (at least present yourself that way): Once I started telling recruiters that I was talking to tons of others and am planning on making a deal this week, I started getting a flood of them calling me back.

The Bad

Everything you do starts to get a price tag. The other day, I asked my wife to make me a sandwichh. She told me to make it myself, and I politely informed her that the 15 minutes spent doing that would cost us $25 so it had better be the best sandwhich I have ever made.
I am not sure if this feeling ever goes away (if you are a veteran freelance, I’d love to hear your thoughts).
It’s a little scary knowing you don’t have a paycheck in X months (X being your current contract length). This was the most frightening thing at first. Now, it seems like an exciting challenge.
Tendency to overwork: Since you now have money++ and can make more just by adding hours, you will be drawn to work more. I have talked to many others who end up leaving freelance because of burnout from working too much. Sure you made $30K in 2 weeks, but you are hating life.

Summary

So far my journey as an independent iOS developer has been incredible. I am loving every minute of it and I encourage anyone interested in it to do the same. I don’t think it’s for the n00b or the non-self starter. This post I found on Hacker News has a brilliant step by step tutorial on moving in this direction.

I hope you have enjoyed yet another post on freelancing.

Thanks for reading!

5 Third Party iOS Libraries I Have Found Useful Lately

2012-08-24T00:00:00-06:00

As I mature as a developer, I try to rely on other people’s code more an more. Why build something from scratch when a solution already exists that you can fit in your project. In Pocket MUD Pro, I used 13 3rd party libraries and am using quite a bit more in the project that I’m currently working on. I figured that I would share some of the libraries that I have been using so that it might save you some time in the future.

1. CocoaAsyncSocket

Link: https://github.com/robbiehanson/CocoaAsyncSocket

Many of my applications involve TCP or UDP networking. There is a lot of boiler plate code involved in every networked application, and CocoaAsyncSocket solves much of that for you.

2. Appirater

Link: http://github.com/arashpayan/appirater/

Hopefully, you have heard of this one or a similar library by now. It’s very challenging to get users to want to review your applications, let alone give you a positive review. AppiRater allows you to prompt a user to rate your application based on either number of launches or “significant events” which you specify.

3. Zip Archive

Link: http://code.google.com/p/ziparchive/

I try to ship small applications that download assets upon launch. A good way to send these assets over the wire is to zip them up and stick them on your server. I have written an article about this on iCodeBlog.

4. Quick Dialog

Link: https://github.com/escoz/QuickDialog

Creating forms in iOS is pretty painful. It usually involves custom table cells and a lot of delegate nonsense. QuickDialog takes away some of this pain and allows you to easily create iOS forms. You can even design them using JSON.

5. TSMiniWebBrowser

Link: https://github.com/tonisalae/TSMiniWebBrowser

Often times, you want a quick and dirty browser in your application. I generally use it to point to in-app documentation or take the user to a page after tapping on a link. It’s quick and easy.

I hope you find some value in this list. I’d love to hear about the libraries you use frequently.

Happy Coding!

How To Become An Indie Game Developer

2012-06-13T00:00:00-06:00

What programmer doesn’t want to be an indie game developer? A great article with tons of tips to help you on your way.

[Article Link]

My Number One Feature Request For iOS 6

2012-06-08T00:00:00-06:00

Fix the Snooze button! I have no idea how this UI component got to Apple’s review team and they were like ”Yep, that looks beautiful! Ship it!”. If Apple changes the snooze button and slaps a 6 on iOS, I will be happy. If not, more rants to follow. Stay tuned….

If There Was Ever A Time To Submit A Show HN Article, It's Right Now

2012-06-01T00:00:00-06:00

Earlier today a post titled ”I Try to Up Vote Every ‘Show HN’ Post and You Should Too” made it to the top of HN. It basically talked about people posting “Show HN” posts are putting themselves out there and the least we can do is give them an up vote. Well, people are listening and as of this posting, there are currently 15 Show HN posts in the top 30. That’s incredible.

So, if you have recently created something cool. Head over to HN’s submission page and add your link making sure to add “Show HN” in the title. You might get some great traffic/feedback out of it.

Lua Scripting The UI For Pocket MUD Pro

2012-05-29T00:00:00-06:00

I have just updated my MUD client [Pocket MUD Pro] to be a universal library. It was surprisingly easy to add the iPad support as most of the application was comprised of UITableViews.

The main “MUD” view was the most challenging part as it contains a couple UIWebViews, UIButons, and a UITextField. However, I chose to do something I feel is pretty cool.

Scripting The UI With Lua

If I haven’t said it enough, I love lua. Especially in the context of scripting within other applications. Pocket MUD Pro already has complete lua support in triggers in aliases, so I figured I might as well apply that same logic to the UI.

Pocket MUD Pro has 3 core sections for the UI not counting the text input field. The main view (UIWebview), the prompt view (UIWebview), and the button bar (custom UIView).

One of the core challenges I faced on the iPhone, was resizing/reorienting all of these views on orientation change as well as when the keyboard was visible and when it wasn’t. To be honest, I spent most of my cycles getting this part right. On the iPad, I decided to things a little differently which improved the speed of my development overall and paved the way for future updates that will allow user-scripted UIs.

The UI Script

I want to start by showing you the lua code that is used to script the UI by default.

--MUD 
mudFrame = Frame:new(&quot;mud_frame&quot;) 
mudFrame.type = FrameTypeMUD
mudFrame.portraitFrame = {0,0,768,931}
mudFrame.portraitFrameKeyboard = {0,0,768,667}
mudFrame.landscapeFrame = {0,0,1024,675}
mudFrame.landscapeFrameKeyboard = {0,0,1024,323}
createFrame(mudFrame)

What’s happening here is, I have created a Frame class that has some properties (type, name, etc…) and injected it into the global lua space for use inside of the UIScripts. Then when the interface gets drawn, I reference the UI script for each of the MUD servers and use it to render the interface.

One interesting thing here is, I set the frames for each of the possible layout scenarios. Portrait, Landscape, with and without the keyboard. That way, when the keyboard hides/dismisses or the user rotates the device, I just reference the this script again and re-render the frame accordingly. This could have been achieved with auto-resizing masks however, it gets much more complex and things get tricky when you want to have a dynamic number of windows.

I follow this exact pattern for the button frames and the prompt frames. As you might have guessed, in a future release, I will open this script area up to MUDders and give the user the ability to script the interface however they would like. Some examples might be:

Dedicated map window
Dedicated chat window
Customized movement buttons
Customized backgrounds/borders/themes
Custom health/status/mana

Given this powerful UI Scripting style, a user will be able to create complex interfaces such as the one below from inside the app:

I still have a ways to go with exposing various functionalities via my custom lua bridge. But things seem to be moving along quite smoothly.

If you want to learn how I was able to bridge lua into my application, consider checking out my talk on lua scripting at 360iDev 2012 later this year!

Happy Coding!

Jailbreak iOS 5.1.1 With Absinthe 2.0 + More Watch Dev Coming

2012-05-25T00:00:00-06:00

The GreenPois0n team has just announced Absinthe 2.0 allowing users of all iDevices (except Apple TV 3) to jailbreak iOS 5.1.1. This is especially good news for me as I can now continue development on my jailbroken app for the inPulse watch, iOS notifier.

[Link URL]

Join Me At 360iDev 2012

2012-05-24T00:00:00-06:00

I mentioned this on Twitter last week, so I might as well post it here to make it more official. My talk Making Your Games More Dynamic With Lua Scripting was accepted for 360iDev 2012! This will be my first official speaking engagement and I could not be more excited/nervous.

The Talk

I have had a huge interest in lua for some time now, especially as it applies to scripting games. In my last project, Pocket MUD Pro, I even embedded lua 5.1 and created my own bridge in order to allow players to fully script the gameplay. This got me very excited for the future as it was so easy to get lua up and running.

My talk will cover the basics of setting lua up in your own iOS projects. I will be using a simple tile based RPG (written in Cocos2D) for the demo and will demonstrate how you might use lua to script the behaviors of the NPCs as well as dynamically add new ones to the game. This opens up a whole world of possibility as you can now ship code over the wire and modify your game content without ever submitting an update to Apple.

It appears my talk has some pretty steep competition in its timeslot. There are two other incredible talks going on at the same time, so I’m starting to campaign for it now :)

Please comment on this post if you plan on attending 360iDev. I would love to connect with you.

[360 iDev Schedule]

Incredible List Of Popular Indie iOS/Android/Steam Titles On Sale

2012-05-24T00:00:00-06:00

We believe that developers should have the freedom to price their games how they like, without interference from the online stores that sell the games. Why? Because it allows us to promote our games more freely, as we are doing here! We rely on the ability to promote our games for our livelihood and control over pricing is an important tool for this purpose.

Because We May is doing something very incredible here. They are a website to help you promote your game by listing it on sale. Any developer can submit their game(s) as long as they put it on sale for the given duration (May 24-June 1). There are currently some amazing games on sale including Osmos, Super Brothers, World Of Goo HD, and more.

[Games Link]

[Submission Link]

Why Facebook IS People

2012-05-23T00:00:00-06:00

This is a very well written article detailing some of the inner workings of Facebook and why its business is YOU.

I wonder when a distributed, self-hosted solution (like Diaspora) will become popular. Have you tried Diaspora or others?

[Article Link]

The guide to implementing 2D platformers

2012-05-23T00:00:00-06:00

http://higherorderfun.com/blog/2012/05/20/the-guide-to-implementing-2d-platformers/

An incredible guide detailing many of the tricks/design patterns used in 2D platformers. Although there isn’t much code to look at, the higher level ideas detailed in the article are invaluable.

Pocket MUD Pro Is Now Universal + Promo Codes

2012-05-23T00:00:00-06:00

I have just updated Pocket MUD Pro to support the iPad! In celebration, it’s on sale for $1.99 (down from $2.99).

Also, here are 10 promo codes for anyone who wants a free copy. Please comment on which code you take so others know which one’s are available.

9E3TF4XRLW97

RA6KFNTT9NEY

KN936MALLH7A

TLPMPXNTMMLL

RL7JNYFL4F7X

3RPAWMFTYY6F

4JYYJFH7HLKR

7XWETP3YP7JT

PN7XERXHH7ME

9R4NYX669FMJ

[Download Link]

MetaWatch Announces iOS Support - Still Can't Compete With Pebble

2012-05-22T00:00:00-06:00

For those of you who have followed my blog for a while, you know that I am a huge geek for smart watches. I had the first version of what is now the Pebble (inPulse) and even hacked a jailbroken iOS app to interface with it.

MetaWatch has been around for quite some time now and looks ok , however their latest update appears to be completely in response to Allerta’s announcement/success of Pebble.

“We are delighted to be the first company to ship a Bluetooth 4.0 smartwatch compatible with both iPhone and Android platforms”

What is really concerning is the fact they they don’t mention anything related to how they are achieving iOS notifications. Pebble has been very upfront in stating that they are planning on leveraging ifttt.com to deliver complex notifications such as Twitter and Facebook. It leads me to believe they haven’t quite sorted everything out and are jumping to a press release in order to ride the smartwatch train.

I have a Pebble coming in August and intend on sharing my experiences as well as code. Perhaps I might scoop up one of these as well and write a comparison post.

[Article Link]

Great Introduction To Lua

2012-05-22T00:00:00-06:00

(click the post title)

I have been using lua in my iOS applications for some time now. This tutorial provides a great introduction to a scripting language that most developers are very curious about. I really suggest spending a few minutes checking it out.

Why you Should Check Out Unity

2012-05-01T00:00:00-06:00

A while back, my buddy seantron showed me some of his 3D games he’d been working on including this one. My initial reaction was “how the heck did he get the chopps to do that?”. While, Sean is an incredible developer with a ton of creativity, doing things like loading models, texture mapping, or even basic 3D projects are flippin hard.

A while back I tried my hand at 3D and made sort of a basic Minecraft style game from scratch using OpenGL ES. Let me tell you, it was brutal (and I have been coding for almost 10 years). This project took me a week or so to ramp up, get basic cubes and textures going and a simple first person view.

Enter Unity

Sean had mentioned to me that he used this 3D engine called Unity to create his games. While I had tried XNA, I had never heard of Unity and figured it was similar (basically a framework with some convenience methods for loading models, mapping, etc…). Boy was I wrong…

Unity 3D is more than just an engine. It is an application that allows even the most novice of developers to create beautiful, rich, 3D games. I’m serious. Check out this demo below of an app I made in unity in about 3 hours using this tutorial. The crazy part is, I wrote almost no code. Much of the interactions and game were developed using drag and drop and free assets.

Link to my awesome game

Getting Started

I was very reluctant to learn Unity at first as the interface appears to be a bit daunting. However, once you check out a few tutorials, it becomes second nature. Here are a few places to get started:

InfinitAmmo’s Unity 3D tutorial series - This was where I first began. He does a great job at going over the basics of Unity while keeping things interesting.

Getting Started With Unity on Active Tuts+ - This is where I made the game you checked out above. Take an hour and do the first in the series, you will be very surprised with the outcome.

Unity 3D tutorials - Unity has a wealth of information and demo projects on their website. They come with the source and comprehensive PDFs detailing various aspects of each of their demo games.

After completing at least the top two series’, you should have enough knowledge to begin hacking on a game of your own. I know that I do :)

Conclusion

I hope this has been enlightening and I really urge you to check out Unity.

Happing Coding!

Unity 3D’s Website

This post is part of iDevBlogADay, a group of indie iOS development blogs featuring two posts per day. You can keep up with iDevBlogADay through the web site, RSS feed, or Twitter.

I Suck At Blogging (Lately)

2012-04-27T00:00:00-06:00

OK, so the title isn’t entirely true (I have maintained quite a few blogs in my day). But, one thing is for sure, I have sucked at blogging lately. So much so, I just had to think hard about having to bold lately using markdown in the previous sentence #meta.

Burnout

I was blogging very consistently for the Envato Network on their Mobile Tuts Plus as well as on iCodeBlog and here. Eventually, I got burnt out and gave up blogging on every blog (for the month).

What happened was, I was blogging to make money (Envato pays $250/post!) and no longer for fun. This sucks and I was missing deadlines and writing crappy content which needed much revision.

New Plan

Write here only (for fun!) and infrequently on icode if time permits as I can do that during work time ;) That being said, expect to see more content here for better or worse. Once a week is the new goal.

Shutup

That’s what you are saying to me. I hate these “Sorry I haven’t been around in a while. I promise to post more” posts that are usually the last posts on a blog for like 5 years just as much as you do. Let’s hope that’s not the case here. You will just have to trust me and subscribe.

Also, I have a sweet new theme from Jekyll Bootstrap.

Pocket MUD Pro Released + Promo Codes

2012-03-29T00:00:00-06:00

I am very proud to announce a brand new version of my Pocket MUD Pro application for iPhone. I have been working very hard to make a perfect MUD client that is suitable for hardcore mud players, visually impaired mud players, and casual mud players.

Here are some of the features:

Support for all orientations
Full ANSI color support
Dedicated prompt
Zoomable Text View
Perfect rendering of MUD text (check out the maps)
Very fast
Hides Telnet codes from the user (unlike every other MUD client)
Autoconnect on startup
List of MUDS
Favorite List
Unlimited Command history
Quickly cycle through command history
Triggers using the lua scripting language
Text Command Alias
Lua scripted aliases
Timer Support
Background support. Stay connected for up to 10 minutes after you close the application.
Support for multiple commands separated by semicolons
Comes packed with a list of some of the most popular muds
In-App Documentation of triggers and aliases
Ability to play sounds when triggers fire
Ability to gag extraneous text, which is extremely helpful for visually impaired players.

Promo Codes

PXYTRKLTWL46
KTXAAMYNYXPP
443433YNJX4E
9K99KJWRXNYT
W44YHPHLRFMT
4HYHLEFXYYN7
4HK74JLMMHAA
KX6XJ79TLWFP
437YTX9KLEN9
7YAMYF4EYALF

Please leave a comment here if you use a code to notify others that it’s been taken

Download it here

I’d love to hear what you guys think about the app.

Happy MUDding!

Vim For iOS Is Incredible

2012-01-25T00:00:00-07:00

I used to be an Emacs guy and would battle to the death on the war between Vim and Emacs. It wasn’t until a coworker of mine sat down and really showed me just how cool/simple/powerful Vim can be. Just using Vim is a new adventure every day and has really improved my productivity. I now use it to code, blog, and even jot down quick notes.

Last week, I saw on Hacker News a link announcing Vim has been ported to iOS. I have spent a week or so with it and can honestly say the port is almost perfect!

It has most of the major Vim features and commands including:

Automatic indentation
Visual mode (block operations)
Language-aware syntax highlighting
Integrated scripting language that lets you extend functionalities
Macros recording and playback
Markers management (to quickly move around the edited file)
Multiple clipboards

You even have access to the config file to remap keys and define your own custom macros.

There are a few features that would make this better on mobile however:

Dropbox Support - Currently you must use iTunes to work with Vim documents on mobile. There needs to be an easier way to share these.
Keyboard bar - Since you have to switch modes so frequently and there are some keys you type often ( “:” ), it would be nice to have quick access to these.
Plugin support - This is an Apple limitation :(
NERDTree - The file browser that’s built in doesn’t work too well.

With Vim mobile, you can now look even more nerdy on your iPhone ;)

Download Vim For iOS

Fluid For Mac

2012-01-19T00:00:00-07:00

As of OSX Lion, I have started to seriously loathe some of the build-it Mac apps (such as Mail, and iCal). While I previously had no issues with them, they now seem to be very clunky and crash quite often. Being a developer, I thought “why don’t I write an app that wraps web apps for you so you basically get “native web apps” that have icons and are launchable?”.

After a quick Google search, I realized this already exists!. The app is called Fluid and it does an incredible job of what I described above and more.

Here are the feature highlights.

Create a “native” Mac app for any web app
Custom icon for each “native” app you create
Full screen mode
User scripps. These are my favorite. They allow you to update the badge count based on information in the browser. See below for a sample user script.

Sample User Script For Twitter

(function () {
        if (window.fluid) {
            setInterval(function updateBadge() {
                var counts = /\d+/.exec(document.title);
                if (counts && counts[0] > 0) {
                    window.fluid.dockBadge = counts[0] > 99 ? '99+' : counts[0];
                } else {
                    window.fluid.dockBadge = '';
                }
            }, 2000);
        }
    })();

Source

Fluid is free with some minimal features, but I urge you to drop the $4.99 to gain full screen mode and user scripts. It’s well worth it. I am not affiliated with them in any way, just a happy customer.

Download Fluid