iConverged

iCloud idiocy continues

Arjun — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 20:58:28 +0000

Really, so far, iCloud is a p**ce of c**p. From the day it was launched, I’ve been trying to use it. Its sync mechanism sucks. I’ve had so many cases of un-synced contacts, erratic behavior, that I had to switch it off and go back to itunes address book sync to make sure it works. Pity. Anyway, continuing its idiocy, I received an email from them today stating my iCloud online acct was almost full. Only, I’ve overlaid it with the system information my computer shows (which is correct, btw). No comments. (click on image for larger size)

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Thanks Steve

Arjun — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:24:41 +0000

Image tribute designed by Jonathan Mark Even if you never met the man, if his visionary products helped your child to read and write at an early age, let grandparents see their grandchildren across thousands of miles without having to crowd around a computer, led the transformation of the mobile and music industry that pays your salary today, made product companies rethink their priorities towards customers, and most importantly made many of us want to make even a fraction of a dent he has made to this industry and shape our careers accordingly, its not surprising that on his passing you’d think you knew him very well and to ask yourself ‘What do you want to do before you go’?

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Adding a VPN server to ReadyNAS

Arjun — Tue, 10 May 2011 15:43:38 +0000

Image (c) NetGear I recently purchased a 4 disk-bay Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ box. This was a few days after I lost 60% of my media collection because my HD just decided to stop working. And yes, I’ve been meaning to back up the archive, but never got around it, till it died. Hindsight is 20-20, I guess. Anyhow, the ReadyNAS NV+ is a great box. The nicest thing about it is that via plugins, you can convert it into a full fledged development box running linux. One of the things lacking was how to make this box a VPN server as well. I currently have OpenVPN running on an ‘always on’ home laptop, but it was better if I moved the VPN server to the ReadyNAS box as it is the one that is supposed to be ‘always on’ anyway. I searched around. There are several sites that give only partial instructions of how to get things working. No one site has ‘everything you need’. So I thought I’d post *exactly* how to do everything you need to get this working....

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Tutorial: RouteWeather Using Google weather and Driving Directions APIs in your iOS apps

Arjun — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:38:01 +0000

First off, let me say this: Google’s terms of service do not allow you to use their APIs for any commercial apps. So it is likely that if you use these APIs, they may never see the light of day in the app store, unless you negotiate a commercial deal with Google. Here is what we will be developing: Let’s assume you are planning a trip from Bethesda, MD to 90210, CA and you plan to drive (Yeah a road warrior!). You can get the driving directions from many places, including Google. What you also want is, what “what is the weather along the route”. Not only that, you want it for the day you plan to drive (so maybe tomorrow, the day after, or the day after the day after…) I often need this information. I don’t drive cross country, but I do drive and knowing the weather along the route and for the day I want to drive is very useful to me. I wish we had an app for that. Well, let’s not wish, let’s write one. In the process, you will learn how...

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iPhone Programming: Who Just Called Me?

Arjun — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 21:07:51 +0000

The best way to learn programming is to solve tasks that irk you. Well, here is something that irked the heck out of me. I often receive calls from outside of the US (India, Korea, Japan etc.). Very often, the incoming caller id leaves out the prefix. Example, instead of “+91 981234 5678″ I get just “9812345678″, or, instead of “+82 111 11111″ I just get “82 111 11111″. The irritating part is that the iPhone cannot map it to my address book. Fine. But there is the additional irritant – If I search the iPhone address book, I can’t search by phone number :-( Damn. So now I am left guessing who just called me. It happened so often, I finally decided to do something about it. Or, I decided to solve the damn problem. So I had to learn how to: 1. Access the call log, so I could check my recent call list and select the number I wanted to check 2. Access my address book and search for that number (substring search) Well, as it turns...

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