Matthew Strickland

Your blog needs a handshake

2015-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

If you are visiting the site today, you may have notice a little bit of change to the layout. I decided to switch things up a bit from a more blog centric landing page to what I am calling a handshake landing page.

Before:

After:

Your typical blog has a menu and some posts. The design is setup so that when the user lands on the site, they already know what to do. For some this is perfectly fine but I have often wondered what if my site became a little more introductory in its prose. Instead of a menu and some posts, how about a greeting and then some info about me. Sure it will have links to my blog posts but let’s not get too forward.

What do you think? Give me a shout

3 Predictions for Apple's upcoming event

2014-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

We are 27 days away from the widely reported Apple event to be held on September 9th and everyone is speculating what we can expect. Here are 3 predictions on what Apple will announce:

iOS 8 Availability

Last September, Apple held a similar event and announced that iOS 7 would be available 8 days later. I expect Apple to follow suit this year and make iOS 8 available either on the 9th or within 10 days of the announcement.

iOS 8 is the update that iOS 7 needed. It refines the user experience in some key areas and offers great interplay with the Mac and Apple TV with continuity.

Under the hood, Apple has opened up a host of APIs available to Developers to make apps more interactive with Extensions at the same time carving out a new space with its announcement of Swift, a new programming language.

The next iPhone(s)

It is no secret (see the above screenshot) that Apple is encouraging Developers to make their apps play nicely with a variety of device sizes. This leads us all to believe that our Apps will soon be running on devices that vary in screen size from your typical 3.5 inch / 4 inch iPhones of today.

The bigger question here is not if there will be a bigger iPhone but perhaps how many and what sizes? Does Apple forgoe the current 4 inch iPhone for a 4.7 inch standard? What about a larger device? 5 inches?

My prediction is that Apple will unveil the next iPhone but it will come in multiple sizes with the 4 inch and 4.7 inch becoming the standard models.

One more thing?

Steve Jobs was a magical presenter, he could capture an audience with just a few words. One of his signature trademarks was the storied one more thing expectation that he baked into all of his talks.

While I doubt Tim Cook will channel the ‘one more thing’ approach, I do expect Apple to announce a new product category this fall. My question is, will this announcement be in September or October?

Historically, Apple has held announcements in September for iPhone and October for iPad. These announcements are intentionally kept separate to help both products breathe and let the market stir with anticipation.

Would Apple be willing to announce their wearable product category at this event? I am going to go out on a limb and say yes.

I hope this new product is not just another ‘watch’. Surely Apple would not just announce a ‘watch’, right? I think their wearable will be more like today’s wristbands than a traditional watch but I am hoping this announcement will awe us like the original iPhone announcement did back in 2007.

So there you have it. iOS 8, new iPhone(s) and a new wearable product line. Sound interesting? As an iOS Developer, I am looking forward to this fall to see what Apple launches to wow us once again. Until then…

Building Gitty 2 Part One

2014-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

Gitty has been a passion of mine for the last 15 months. I created Gitty because I wanted a great GitHub experience on my iPhone and there was not one that suited my tastes. After many long nights of coding away, I launched Gitty in May of 2013 to the world. Gitty was well received and soon changed how people used GitHub on their iOS devices. I even want to think it inspired the kind folks at GitHub to begin mobile views for their site. :)

iOS 7

Later in the summer of 2013, Apple announced iOS 7 to the world and I had a big decision on my hand. I knew releasing a second version of Gitty would be premature given the launch of the first version but Gitty would need an overhaul to be up to date with this new version of iOS. I decided to update Gitty for iOS 7 and not charge my users for it. The update was well received, but deep down I knew there was a lot more I wanted to do with Gitty.

Desire

Setting out to create a GitHub experience on iOS is fairly large task if you are going to deliver on all of its features. My hope was and still is today, that anyone who purchases Gitty would feel like they are using a GitHub product. This meant that the features felt familiar, the asthetics were in line and the experience was top notch. With the first version, I felt like I did this but with Gitty 2 I wanted to really knock it out of the park.

Initial Commit

After the holidays, I began sketching out thoughts and ideas in my mind about what I would do differently. Questions arose like: Will I tweak? Will I re-write from scratch? I soon settled on the idea that I wanted to rewrite the entire Gitty app from scratch and open source it to the community.

Why open source? Well I want to help other developers learning iOS have a solid app to learn from. I also want to give back to the great community on GitHub who without their libraries and support, Gitty would be nowhere near as good as it is today. With that, Gitty 2 was “File->New” on January 29, 2014.

So that is part one of the “Building Gitty 2” series. In future posts, I will open up about the tools I use to build Gitty 2, the design choices I made and how the App has performed in the App Store. I hope this information is something you find useful in your iOS Development career.

If you are interested in some open source bits that are already available from Gitty 2, check out these libraries with more to come:

MPSHorizontalMenu - the menus used throughout the app.
MPSFollowButton - star / follow button used on repository / user views.
OcticonsIOS - used to bring the octicons to life.

Until next time… :)

Strong Opinions, Weakly Held

2013-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

I had an encounter this week that made me pause and re-evaluate things.

I have never been a person who thinks it is my way or the highway, but I will admit that I have strong opinions. These opinions are forged from my experiences and I expect others to bring theirs to the table too.

I am not afraid to admit wrongness or even failure, I truly think you can learn and never arrive. Just because we disagree on the path does not mean we cannot desire the same destination.

Back to my encounter…

I found it strange that someone I did not know would be offended by my opinion and preference without engaging in the how’s and why’s.

Sure it could just be internet trolling and I need to have thicker skin but I felt compelled to ask this question: “Where did we go wrong when someone having an opinion was a bad thing?”

Having an opinion as a Developer does not mean you are a rockstar, stuck up or bad person and it certainly does not mean you are an immovable object when it comes to building great software.

At the same time, I really enjoy when someone brings a wealth of opinions to the table. It means they have fought battles and won wars (not actual ones) which brings a wealth of experience with it.

So here’s a disclaimer I will toss out: my opinions may be strong but they are weakly held. If there’s a better way to do _____ then let’s explore it.

The App Open Source Built

2013-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

Last evening, I was fortunate enough to be able to speak at the Atlanta iOS Developers Meetup. The talk centered around how I created Gitty leveraging Open Source. I spent some time trying to advocate for Open Source in iOS Development and for others to give back. Thanks to everyone who came out and for the kind words.

If you would like to see my slides you can view them on Speaker Deck. Please feel free to ask questions in the comments if you were unable to chat with me last night.

3 Tips for Recruiters

2013-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

If you are in the Tech Industry then you are no stranger to recruiters. Not a day goes by where I do not receive an email or a LinkedIn request from a recruiter who is hiring. Our Industry is extremely competitive and everyone is looking to hire the best.

Unfortunately, recruiters get things wrong most of the time. Instead of coming off as interested, they quickly come off as spammy. There is even a website dedicated to avoiding most recruiters.

Here are three tips I would give to any recruiter who is looking to hire in our industry.

1. Make It Personal

The worst recruiters copy and paste blanket emails to candidates with names swapped out via find and replace but great recruiters take the time to court potential candidates.

Let’s face it, we all want to be a part of a chase. Whether we are doing the chasing or being chased, it’s fun and exciting.

When I was trying to get the eye of my wife back in our dating days, I did not search the internet for a romantic email or date idea rather I took the time to think about her and made all of those things personal.

When you are pursuing candidates, try to gather as much information about them as you can. Read their blog and tweets to figure out what makes them tick.

If you find a candidate that is a huge New England Patriots fan, perhaps mail them a Patriots hat with a hand written note expressing your interest to talk and interview.

If that is too forward for you, shoot them an email noting a recent event they attended or were a part of. Anything you can do to make the first interaction personal will help you avoid the spam folder.

2. Know What You Are Asking For

Thankfully our industry is becoming less about buzzwords and more about substance. Recruiters actually know what a GitHub account is. But just because a person has GitHub account does not mean they are the right person for the position you are hiring.

Do a little homework here. Ask some detail about what the position requires whether that be programming languages, frameworks and how those match up with the required results.

From there, learn how to browse someone’s GitHub profile. Learn what a star is and how that indicates something good. Grab a few repositories the candidate has contributed to and ask a Developer to see what their thoughts are.

Just a little bit of work here will save you a lot of work on the backend, not to mention your employer the time of interviewing a candidate who is not the right one.

3. Don’t Ask Me To Do Your Job

We all know you get paid when someone is hired. By asking me to refer others to you implies that you are trying to get me to work for you for free.

If you want a reference from me, be willing to make it worth my time. Otherwise you just come off as a person who has some ends and they are looking for the means. Our interaction becomes a transaction and for most that is empty, shallow and not profitable.

I know this writing is a departure from the norm but I want this process to be better for everyone involved. If recruiters could take a moment and consider these three things, I think the conversation moves forward for everyone. What about you?

Four years ago everything changed

2013-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

Four years ago my life changed forever when we welcomed Ella Reese Strickland into the world. Not only did I become a dad, but I fell in love again all over.

A few things I will never forget…

I will never forget that moment when the doctor lifted you out of his hands and into mine.
I will never forget the first time our eyes met.
I will never forget the feeling that you knew my voice when I first told you I loved you.

A few things I hope you will never forget…

You are loved and have extreme value because you were created in God’s image.
Your dreams are just a glimpse at what can be if you have the conviction that they must be.
Your mark on this world may be measured in many ways but I hope the greatest is how you loved others.

Love you Ella, Happy Birthday :)

Daddy

3 Tips For Balancing Personal and Professional

2013-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

In a day and age where we are always on, always connected and always available, it becomes increasingly impossible to navigate these waters. On the one hand you love your craft, you pour your heart and soul into it. And on the other hand you love those who you do life with and want to make sure they know their value and importance.

The image above is a text that my wife sent as she wrote down what my daughter wanted to say to me. Just before this, I wrote my wife a text that was for my daughter telling her how special she was and how much she meant to me.

I don’t share that picture with you to tell you I am great or something like that but just that this process reminded me how tough it can be to balance our professional life with our personal life.

Here are a few tips I have tried to incorporate into my life that help me balance personal and professional.

1. Turn Off Your Phone

Our phones are a great tool but also can be a great stumbling block when it comes to balancing personal and professional. When are you really off work? If your email lives on your phone then probably never.

I would suggest that when the work day end that you turn off your phone. If not then you will constantly checking it. We’ve all seen the family out to dinner where the parents are on their phones and there is no conversation happen. Heck, I am sure that’s been me too. Disconnecting from your phone, twitter, facebook, instagram for a period of time will help you balance things.

2. Be Fully Present

When you are at your child’s ballgame, are you truly there? Or are you thinking about that problem that needs to be solved at work? Being a developer, I know first hand that problem solving rarely stops when you get up from your desk. Usually there is a problem that lingers in your mind until it is solved and therefore being fully present is tough.

The challenge here is to be fully engaged in whatever you are doing. If you are always somewhere else in your mind then you can never fully enjoy the things you are a part of.

3. Create Regular Appointments

One tip I received early on in my marriage was that when you get married dating your wife does not stop. Because I want a healthy and great marriage, my wife and I regularly go on dates together. It is a time for us to disconnect from our professional lives and now our children and reconnect. Our marriage is refueled and we are ready to tackle whatever lies ahead.

If you have children like me, then dating your kids is a great way to be intentional with them. Not only are you showing them how they should be treated by their future spouses, you are showing them that they are important.

Creating these regular appointments will keep you balanced and remind you and others of the important things in life.

A Lasting Image

Growing up, I loved to play baseball and even when I was not playing baseball I was thinking of it. My dad worked for an Insurance company and while his time was limited he always made sure to coach the teams I played on. One lasting image I have in my head is of my dad, dressed in his buttoned up shirt, slacks and dress shoes coaching from the 3rd base box. That image reminds me that while work was important for my dad, I also was important to him. It’s the little things that we remember in life.

iOS Simulator and Case Insensitivity

2013-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

Recently, I ran into a really strange bug that had me perplexed for a bit. I was going about my normal business of adding some assets to an iOS project, everything appeared to worked fine on the iOS Simulator but when I ran on device my new images were not showing up.

At first I thought it was something to do with how I was loading the UIImage. You see, I need to get some data from the server and then create a string that represented my image in the bundle for loading. For example: all of my images were prefixed with a certain naming convention, e.g. ABC123.png, ABC456.png, etc. After a little debugging, nope that was not the problem at all.

My next thought is that somehow when creating the IPA for Adhoc deployment, the assets were not being bundled. To debug this, I remembered a little trick I learned from NSScreencast using a ruby library called appcrush to extract assets from an IPA. After running through this process, everything was there so that was not the problem.

At this point, I reached out to some colleagues to see if anyone else had ran into a similar problem. My friend Paul reached back out shortly with an idea:

I think I may have had an issue like that. If I remember right it was because the simulator is not case-sensitive but the device is. I'm not sure if I'm remembering that right but its something to check.

As I was reading those words, it hit me. I had created a ruby script to rename all of the assets I was working with to follow the convention I needed and in doing so, I upper cased everything. Sure enough, I had also uppercased the extension so instead of being .png it was .PNG.

A few quick changes and a new Adhoc deployment, sure enough that was it.

So if you are ever running into a problem where an asset shows up on the iOS Simulator but not on device, first check for the case sensitivity of the file name because that may likely be your problem.

Selling Backwards...Turning An App Dud Into A Stud

2013-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

So you made your first App. Congrats.

All of your friends and family purchased the App? Sweet.

One day passes, two days pass, a week, a month and very little sales or traction? Yup, we’ve all been there.

In this post, I want to show you a strategy I came up with that helped me turn an App that had less than 50 sales into a Top 200 selling App.

A Little Back Story

In March of this year (2013), I launched BabyMe Slideshow to the world, you can read more about that adventure here. The launch was a lot of fun. While I had sent a few Apps to the store for other people, it was my first personal App release.

When the App launched, I was extremely excited and ready to see the $$$ roll in. My family, friends and some strangers in Korea purchased on launch but after a few days, I started to realize this App thing was not as easy as I thought it may have been. A few months passed, I started to work on my next App and I figured I would chalk BabyMe Slideshow as my first volley into this area and be okay with its lack of success.

Then it hit me….maybe there is a different way to sell this App? Surely there’s a way in a sea of hundreds of thousands of Apps to make yours get noticed? Right?

The Strategy

I remembered awhile back that my wife told me about this site that lists Apps that have “gone free”. The concept of the site is to track Apps that went from paid to free and alert people of its availability. In my head, I pictured that scene from Finding Nemo where the birds see the fish on the dock and start saying “Mine, Mine, Mine”. People were waiting to pounce on Apps that they once thought of purchasing or would give a look if only they were free.

With this knowledge in hand here’s what I decided to do:

Make BabyMe Slideshow Free
Once a lot of people downloaded the App for Free, use their enjoyment of the App as free Advertising
Make BabyMe Slideshow Paid again.

The Stats

In March of 2013, I sold 35 copies of BabyMe Slideshow and in April, I sold 1 copy. In late May, I deployed the above strategy and soon BabyMe Slideshow racked up thousands of downloads. I made an iPad version which I also gave away for free. After a month of free downloads and the “hook” was set, I flipped the switch back to paid in July.

Did it work? Did my strategy pay off? Well I already spilled the beans and the answer is yes it did. BabyMe Slideshow soon sprang up to the top 200 in Kids/Family Games.

What happened? How did it work?

Some Reflections

My hope in deploying this strategy was that by giving it away for free to several thousands of people that they would love my App. They would love it so much that they would also tell their friends. And their friends would tell their friends and soon BabyMe Slideshow would be a goto parenting App.

Once I flipped the switch to Paid, I also hoped that this sharing between friends would continue and while some people would have received the App for free, they would encourage their friends to download the App because it is “totally” worth 99 cents.

So that’s my theory and I think it worked. I think enough people found value in the App that they told their friends and even thought it is Paid now, they are okay with plopping down 99 cents for it.

The big question is will it work for others? I think it just might. If you have an App that is underperforming, try making it free for a few months and then turn it back to Paid again. Perhaps all of those people who grab your App for free will tell their friends and when you switch it back to Paid they will be okay paying for the App because of the recommendation.

I am a big fan of charing money for things you feel are worth it, I charge $7.99 and $9.99 for Gitty and I feel it is worth every penny. In the App world we live in today, it is very hard to make any money when everything is free. It is even harder to get your App noticed. Instead of using advertising or sacrificing your vision, try my strategy and let me know if it works for you like it did for me.

Learning How To Say Yes To No

2013-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

Eight years ago this December, I said yes to my wife. To be her wedded husband, to have and to hold, you know the drill… On that day when I said yes to Katie, I was also saying no to every other woman that could possibly come my way.

Soon after, I began to learn that my yes’s started to define my no’s and the same is true for us in all aspects our lives whether we realize it or not. When you or I say yes to something we are also saying no to other things.

You and I can only do so much. We can only give so much time and energy to our work, to a cause, to anything really. That is why it is important to learn how to say yes to no.

Given the choice of doing a few “great” things or handfuls of “good” things, I think most of us would choose great every single time. Yet this begs the question, are you and I busying our lives with so many things that we cannot say no to that we do not have time for something great?

Vision Brings Clarity

So what should we be saying yes to? I think it all starts with vision.

Andy Stanley says in his book Visioneering that vision is “a clear mental picture of what could be, fueled by the conviction of what should be.”

So what could be in my life and your life?

What should be in my life and your life?

Ultimately, what must be in my life and your life?

As a man, I know that everyday I battle this idea that my career is what defines me, maybe you’ve battled this as well. It is so easy to look at what we produce as the defining measurement for our life. The danger with this is we start to become a “human-doing” instead of a human-being.

This is why choosing what we give our lives to vocationally matters. With a proper perspective, we should be free from the idea of work defining us and instead start to let our work define the impact we have in others’ lives.

So I’ll ask you again, what is the vision for your life?

Taking Inventory

What are you saying yes to today, that really you should be saying no to?

Are you in a place where you cannot give your life to something great because you are too busy with good?

Each day, I am personally challenged by this idea and just so you know, I am not there yet. But I am learning that with each passing day to focus on a vision for my life and then start saying yes to things that get me closer to realizing it.

The methods may change, but the vision rarely does. Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon said it like this: “We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.”

My Setup

2013-07-17T00:00:00+00:00

I am a big fan of sites like The Setup. This site allows you to look into the world of a peer and see how they tackle their everyday problems with Hardware and Software. Below is a look into my current setup, what’s yours?

Who are you, and what do you do?

I’m Matthew Strickland, a Developer, a Senior Software Engineer at Vertigo, a husband to Katie and a dad to Ella and Jad. For the past year at Vertigo, I have been working on iOS Apps like Golf Channel Academy and Sports Talk. In my free time I work on things like Gitty and BabyMe Apps as well as serve my community.

What hardware do you use?

Work:

I have a late 2011 15 inch Macbook Pro that I dev on during the day. This machine is plugged into my 27-inch Apple Cinema Display and a DAS Keyboard. I also use a Blue Microphone for audio and for listening I use a Razer Moray. For scrolling and tapping around, I use an Apple Magic Trackpad

Personal:

For my personal use, I share a 2012 13 inch Macbook Air with my wife. It is suprisingly a powerful and very efficient machine. I have done everything from building iOS Apps to playing graphic intensive games on it and it can withstand all of that and some.

And what software?

For the past year, my software has primarily revolved around Developing for iOS and the web.

For iOS:

Xcode for everything, but I have played around with Xamarin Studio and Ruby Motion.

For general development and everything else:

Sublime Text 2 and Vim for writing code and text. Mou for Markdown writing. iTerm 2 for all things console. GitHub for Mac for when I want to visualize my git flow. Mail for Exchange Email, Sparrow for Gmail. Chrome for browsing. Kindle and Pocket for reading things. TweetBot for all things Twitter. Pixelmator for my low level designs. For version control I use Git and GitHub to host my projects.

Some iOS Apps I love and use:

Gitty for keeping up to date on my projects and work. TweetBot for all of my tweets on the go. Instagram, Chrome, Rdio, Bible, Nest, Quicklytics and Timehop are other apps I use on a regular basis.

What would be your dream setup?

My dream setup is actually almost a reality. I prefer a future where no matter the device, the experience is virtually the same. My settings, preferences, the way I like to do things are all available to me and they sync accordingly. With things like iCloud, DropBox and the adoption of sync across platforms inside of programs, that day is vastly approaching.

As someone who also develops for the platforms I use, I would love to see a unified approach to building Apps for Mac OSX, iOS. This would allow for creating Apps in those platforms to be a bit easier than it is today. I am hopeful that with OSX 11.0 that we will get there with the introduction of new API’s and Frameworks.

Mom

2013-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

Today is my Mom’s birthday and this post is dedicated to her.

Earliest Memories

One of my earliest and most endearing memory of my mom came when I was 8 years old. I played baseball in a league higher than my age with 9 and 10 year olds. My dad made that call because he wanted me to face live pitching instead of another year hitting off of a tee.

It was our first game, new uniform (we were the Mariners) and I was ready to go. Being smaller than the other kids, my dad decided to put me lower in the lineup and play me at second base even though I would go on to play just about every position and bat 3rd later in life. That day we were facing some stiff competition. The pitcher, a 10-year-old, was arguably one of the better players in the league and mainly due to his size. Next to me, he looked like a grown man.

When it came time for me to bat, I dug my cleats into the batters box, kicked a few pieces of dirt around and stepped out to get the sign from my dad down the third base line…I was ready. What happened next is pretty funny looking back on it but it was devastating when it happened. The very first pitch of the at bat was coming in hard and high, right for my head. By the time I tried to duck, the ball was already on me and sure enough, I took a baseball right to the mouth. Talk about a great way to start the season.

My dad came rushing into the batters box and I can remember hearing my mom shriek from the crowd. After that, my dad subbed me out and let me sit the rest of the game with my mom in the stands. Sure that sounds wimpy but in that moment, I just wanted the pain to go away and to know it was going to be alright and I found that comfort in the arms of my mom.

Lasting Character

You see, that’s the way my mom is, not just for me but for anyone. She is the kind of woman who will open her arms wide, give you a big hug and let you know that everything is going to be alright.

She’s the kind of mom that is always there, always calls to check in and always knows the right things to say and when to listen.

She’s the kind of person that views life as a series of opportunities and blessings, not a series of obstacles and burdens.

I have seen my mom endure great pain in the past few years with the loss of her mom and brother. Through it all she remains her positive, upbeat self, relying on the truth from her heavenly father to guide her.

Dear Mom

Mom, I love you. You mean the world to me. If I could choose any mom in the world, I would choose you every time.

It’s the little things you do in life that echo and those are the things I will always cherish about you.

Continue to love God, pursue him daily and let him define you.

Your Son,

Matthew

An Update To Gitty Now Available

2013-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

A new version of Gitty has now shipped and is available as a free update in the App Store. If you have not picked up a copy yet, you can do so here.

With this update, users can now view their personal and starred Gists. Code diff viewing has gotten better as well. Instead of looking at a tiny view of the code, each should render in full height now.

For a full list of updates, check out the release notes below. Thanks again for your support on Gitty and as we step towards 2.0, I think you will be happier and happier.

Release Notes

Gists

Gitty now supports Gists, viewing your favorite Gists is just a tap away.
Share your gists.

Commits

Gitty offers better support for viewing commit diffs. No longer do you have to look at tiny boxes of rendered code, the height of each box should be match the height of the file.

Code Viewing - (iPhone and iPod Touch)

You can now view your code in landscape mode.

Updates

Keep up to date with the latest changes for Gitty right inside of the app.

Bugs

Fixed a bug where trying to enter the edit mode for adding a comment multiple times would not produce the desired result.
Fixed searching terms with spaces.
Fixed menu options for Repositories without Issues.

Misc

Updated Russian Translation.

Ship Early And Often

2013-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

Gone are the days where you wait months and years before you ship this huge piece of software. In is the idea of shipping early and often.

The core belief behind shipping early and often is that incremental improvements matched with customer feedback makes great software.

In this post, I want to examine this concept a little further and share some things I have learned as I have begun to embrace shipping early and often.

Shipping Early Forces Focus

Shipping software comes with great responsibility. I am not endorsing an idea where we all begin to ship half-baked and broken features. This is not a license to ship buggy, frustrated software but it does force you to balance that last “10 percent” for a feature that solves a problem of your users right now.

If you decide to ship a piece of software “early”, you must identify and focus on core features. Because your iterations will be small, building core features that solve real problems is imperative.

Shipping early requires you to focus on features that matter to your customers. Customers are okay with software that feels “incomplete” if it solves a problem of theirs, day one.

Shipping Often Projects Ownership

The best software is built by people who are invested. Contrast that with the worst experience a customer can have is the feeling of abandonment.

You will earn a lot of trust and patience when it does not take years for you to deliver new, better or improved to your customers.

Your customers have been burned in the past and they are looking for a reason not to trust you. Shipping often tells them that you are committed to making the product the best it can be.

Updates Become Transparent

Shipping early and often sets a pace and informs your customers. It tells them that value is greater than version.

I just checked the version of Google Chrome I am running, it’s Version 27.0.1453.116 m. What does that tell you?

For me it says that Google is not as focused on 1.0, 2.0 but they are focused on getting the product right. As they continue to tweak, fix, implement they are doing this at a pace where the version does not matter as much, it’s the value the customer is experiencing.

Are you too caught up in versions and trying to cram as many features into a release as possible?

Doing so may feel “complete” but you are also setting yourself up for a potential communication nightmare, not to mention the possibility of introducing a lot of bugs at once. Speaking of communication…

Communication Is Required

As creators of software, I like to also think we are curators of a greater story being told and with this comes great responsibility. If you are iterating fast, it is important that customers are not left behind.

If you are focusing on core features and not just every “whim” then you are on your way to making sure this does not happen. Communicating change and updates becomes a necessary tool in your belt that you must wield. Your company’s blog just became important.

So where are you at in your creative journey? Are you stuck creating monolithic releases or are you iterating fast? No matter the side, we have a great responsibility.

GitHub Feature Request: Copy Repository Issue Labels

2013-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

One thing I love about GitHub is how easy it is to use their Issue feature. If you can compose an email then you can work with GitHub Issues. For the die-hard hackers, we can do neat things like close out an issue via a commit message making our workflow extremely easy.

Once your team starts using GitHub Issues to track bugs and features, you will soon become addicted to having these meta software development aspects so close to your code.

A feature I would love to see GitHub introduce is the ability to copy a repository’s issue labels to a new or existing repository.

The Why

If you are anything like me then you probably have settled into a rhythm for how you create software, a set of norms if you will.

When it comes to GitHub Issues you probably have a standard set of label names and colors that you use for each project. This consistency, especially within a larger team, creates a more efficient workflow because people begin to learn the norms and eliminate guesswork.

I am sure there are some people who rarely create a new repository, but there are probably an equal or greater number who are creating repositories daily for new internal apps, new products, etc. Each time you create a new repository, how cool would it be to have a drop down that says, “Copy Issue Labels from:” and this allows you to select an existing repository.

Small But Big

I think this is a small tweak, but it has a big effect on creating new repositories. Users may not be discouraged to start-up a fresh idea because it is pretty simple to get your standard workflow going with one click of a button.

In addition, maybe it will promote this idea of creating a structured workflow for teams out there as they consider how they organized their issues.

Parting Thoughts

If this particular idea were not fully accepted perhaps there’s another step.

Right now, when you create a new repository, you are given a standard set of label names and colors. If we could not copy from another repository, maybe we could override the default? In my mind this sounds like more work, but I am not work on it everyday so I am not sure.

Small feature, but a nice one to have. Is this something you or your team has run up against in the past?

On Building Great Products

2013-07-09T00:00:00+00:00

In August of 2009, my wife and I welcomed our first child, Ella Reese, into this world. Anyone who has had the privilege of becoming a parent will tell you, life changed for us. Sure there were a new set of responsibilities but with it also came a new set of adventures.

As Ella grew, her thirst for knowledge also grew. Soon we found ourselves looking for iOS apps that would satisfy or peak her interest to supplement the education we were fostering in our home. I can remember one stage where Ella loved pictures. There was something about seeing herself in pictures that just lit up her life.

But there was this problem…

Ella, in all of her enthusiasm, would eventually push the wrong button and land herself outside of the pictures and into another part of iOS.

I tell you this story because this experience led me to create BabyMe Slideshow. You see, I knew my daughter loved looking at photos and I knew she hated it when she would exit the photos because she lacked the control to know what everything did. The good news is I knew I could solve this problem.

I could create an App where she could look at photos and it would be pretty difficult to escape the App. But like most parents, time and priorities grew and this idea left. But then, my wife and I went and had a second child. This time around, I would bound to make this App because I needed it and because I needed it surely there were others out there who did as well.

The Best Products Solve Your Own Problems

I believe that people who use the products they create tend to make better products. Why is this?

They are solving a real world problem (they have it) and not some problem they think someone has.
They experience the good parts and the bad parts of the thing they build.
They remove doubt about the user experience because they are the use case.

You Are Your First Customer

When you build something you will use, you have a customer from day one.

When I built Gitty, I was, in part, building it for myself. While I would eventually share it with the world, I was foolish enough to think that there were people out there who may just want the same experience I wanted. If they did, great, if not then I was going to be happy.

Software curation is an undervalued skill in today’s market. Some people may refer to this as taste, foresight. Call it what you may, when you are building something you will use, making yourself happy tends to go a long way in making a good product.

Some Examples

In my world (software), I can think of some great examples of people who are using what they create and are making great products.

37signals - Basecamp was birthed out of a need to create a better way to communicate with clients. A tool that became a form of communication and project management soon transformed their business into a full-time software venture.
GitHub - Knowing that the people who build GitHub also use it everyday to build GitHub is pretty cool. They are not guessing at their users needs because they themselves are the user. Much like 37signals, GitHub was birthed out of a need to create a better way to use git and build software.
Square - Birthed out of the ability for a friend to sell his artwork to someone with a credit card, Square is revolutionizing how the world process payments. From day one, the founders were users of what they were building and the rest is history.

What About You

Not everyone has the luxury of working on something full-time that they use. Perhaps that is in your future or you can start something on the side but that does not mean we can learn from these examples.

If you are not able to work on what you build, ask yourself these questions:

How can I get closer to the product?
How quickly can I begin observing how people use what I build?
What problems are we solving?
What problems are we creating?

These types of questions will lead you down the path of a first hand experienced user and lead to better products. No matter if you are building software, apps, houses, etc., I think we can all learn from those who use what they build and why their products are great.

Do you work on something that you also use? Let me know in the comments…

Awareness

2013-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

Earlier this year, more than 4,000 passengers and crew aboard a Carnival Cruise Ship were stranded in the Gulf of Mexico after an engine fire broke out. The scene was terrible, people were dying and it made national headlines. Here’s a quote to take in:

Some of the 4,200 people on board reported that cabin carpets are soaked in urine, passengers are sleeping in tents on deck and scarce food supplies has reduced them to eating cold onion sandwiches. [Source: Mail Online](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2277914/Carnival-Triumph-CEO-Micky-Arison-takes-basketball-game-thousands-suffer.html)

Mistakes happen in life, things will go wrong. Sometimes it is not how you prepare but how you react that matters most.

Three days later as the passengers and crew were still stranded living in conditions that were inhumane, Carnival CEO Micky Arison is taking in a NBA game for his Miami Heat, tweeting and having a great time. While normally a harmless act, in view of the crisis that his company was going through perhaps not the best decision.

This is not a blog to bash Micky Arison but to raise the question, what level of awareness did he have at the time? What group of accountability had he surrounded himself that was going to ask the question, “why are you at a basketball game when the company is hanging in the balance?”

Four months later, Carnival replaced Arison as CEO.

Carnival replaced Arison as CEO not because he was a failing CEO, quite the contrary as he held that position for 34 years. Carnival replaced Arison as CEO because he lost the awareness in the one moment he needed it the most.

Increasing importance

More and more people are recognizing that awareness is pivotal not only to their individual success but to the success of the companies they lead. 37signals and Jason Fried are trying to solve this problem with a new product called Know Your Company.

Jason asks the question this way: “You own your company, but how well do you know your company?” This question set him down a path to build a tool where he can better know his company, where he can become more aware.

Awareness informs us as leaders and helps us make better decisions.

It is encouraging when guys like Jason find this to be true and do not just stop there but go forward in making awareness a requirement for their leading.

Going forward

As I prepared to write this, I could not help but wonder who Micky Arison’s advisers were and where were they during this crisis? Who were the people that could be brutally honest with him and tell him to board the first plane to the Gulf of Mexico?

As you continue down your path, I hope you keep this idea of awareness in mind. I am finding that awareness best manifests itself in accountability.

Who do you have in your life asking you tough questions?

Who do you have in your life listening to your plans and can help you balance those decisions?

Finding that person or group could be the difference between leading and being unaware.

On Remote Work

2013-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

In the fall of 2006, I took my first Developer job with a small software firm just north of Atlanta, GA. Soon thereafter, I became aware of their “work from home” policy which I thought was amazing.

It was exciting to think that a small company valued their employees time enough to allow them to work from home. The goal was to cut down on their employees’ commute and help increase productivity. Little did they know at the time but they were setting trends that would become an industry standard.

As the years passed, I began to work remotely even more and now I actually work from home full-time for Vertigo Software. In this post I want to outline how I work from home and some tips for employers.

How I work from home

If you have worked from home then I know you can identify the “look” you receive when people find out you get to work from home. At first it is a little bit of shock, next it is a little bit of curiosity and then a set of questions about “how do you do that?” For me it is pretty simple given my role but let me walk you through some strategies I have.

Set a schedule

Just because you have the flexibility of working from home does not mean you will just work “whenever you want”. While that may end up being the case on some days, most likely setting a rhythm of when you start and when you end (just like any normal job) will help you set pace and be efficient.

I have small children and thus I am usually up anywhere between 6:00 AM and 7:30 AM during the week therefore I tend to start work pretty early. In the same spirit, I want to make sure my kids have a good amount of “daddy” time therefore I tend to end my day between 5:00 pm and 6:00 pm. Having this rhythm sets expectations for my employer, my project teammates and my family which leads to a successful work and home life.

During the day I will take a couple of 10 minute breaks when I hear them stirring downstairs to grab some fresh water and make sure they know I love them. These little periodic check ins are not only great for them but they are great for my spirit too.

Set boundaries

Good boundaries can ensure that you are both productive and healthy when you work from home. Just because you can work from home does not mean you should work all of the time. Your time away from your job as a remote employee is just as important as the person who goes into an office everyday.

Make sure you are able to unplug, get away and enjoy your family and friends. For me, when I unplug, I unplug. I try to not look at my phone all night long while playing with my kids but try to be fully present with them.

When I began working from home fulltime, my wife and I also decided to remake our “mother-in-law suite” into my full-time office. For our home this is a part of the house that is completely excluded from everything else. It allows me the ability to shut my door and be “away”. Being able to get away and be distraction free is essential in any work place but especially when working remotely.

Setup feedback loops and healthy systems

One common problem that most remote employees feel is the disconnect with their counterparts who work at the office. If your team is not fully distributed then you will likely run into this. When you are in an office you can go to lunch with a peer and pop into someone’s office for feedback but being remote this is not so easy.

Scott Hanselman wrote a blog on this topic recently that I think you should read.

For me, I try to make sure whoever I “report” to or work on projects with know that I am available and that our systems allow others to see what we are working on and the progress that is being made. Using tools like GitHub, Google Hangouts, Skype and Join.me allow for my work to be transparent and contact to be a few clicks away. This type of transparency is imperative to making remote work “work”.

A few tips for employers

If you are wrestling with the idea of letting your employees work remotely or perhaps you currently do, here are a few tips from my perspective:

Celebrate equally - If you are doing something “in-house” for those employees who work locally, think of a way to also celebrate those who are remote. I know this is not always possible but even just the gesture goes a long way.
Connect regularly - At Vertigo, we do a weekly “all hands” meeting every Friday. This is a time for local and remote employees to connect, for our leaders to disperse important information to the company and for us to celebrate project releases. These little check points make for great comradery as well as boost morale which are essential.

If you a leader at your company and not currently doing remote work, perhaps you should consider the benefits. It would likely increase loyalty with your current employees, allow you to recruit the best talent and not that talent which is within driving distance, as well as make your people more productive.

This is the first time I have written on this topic, but expect more in the future. Let me know in the comments if you work from home and what your experience has been. Thanks!

Announcement: Gitty for GitHub now available on iPad

2013-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

Today, it is with great joy that I announce the release of Gitty for GitHub on the iPad. Download your copy today right here.

Why iPad?

Ever since I released Gitty for GitHub back in May, the #1 question I get is “when will the iPad version be out?” Well friends, today is that day.

All along, I have wanted to create an iPad version of Gitty. I felt there was a definite need to create a great GitHub experience on the iPad.

With Gitty on the iPad, it is everything you love about GitHub but for the iPad. Instead of having to interact with a web browser, you can enjoy a full native experience as you browse your Issues, Code, Repositories and Activity.

In the Pipeline

While the iPad version was just released yesterday and Version 1.2 for the iPhone and iPod Touch was made available on Tuesday, a new update for both versions is almost ready to be shippped.

Here is a peek at what is to come:

Gists

Gitty now supports Gists, viewing your favorite Gists is just a tap away.
Share your gists.

Commits

Gitty offers better support for viewing commit diffs. No longer do you have to look at tiny boxes of rendered code, the height of each box should be match the height of the file.

Code Viewing

You can now view your code in landscape mode.

Updates

Keep up to date with the latest changes for Gitty right inside of the app.

Screenshots

Here are a few screenshots of what Gitty looks like for the iPad:

[gallery link=”file” ids=”460,459,458,457,456”]

Parting thoughts

I hope you enjoy Gitty for the iPad as much as I do. Today is just the beginning of its adventure but I am already thrilled with the product it is. Get your copy today and let me know your feedback in the comments.

Thanks!

GitHub Feature Request: Organizational Wikis

2013-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

I love GitHub and use it daily. So much so that I built an App for it. GitHub has changed the way the world creates software forever. If GitHub were to grant me one feature request today, I would ask for Organizational Wikis.

Origins

I can remember back to 2009 and a conversation I had with a colleague at the time about whether or not we were going to use Git or Mercurial. While both were similar, my argument for Git was that I thought this GitHub thing would really take off and it was already showing strong signs in the Ruby community. Fast forward 4+ years later and as they say, “the rest is history.”

A little background

If you are unfamiliar with GitHub’s organizations feature, then take a look at this blog post when it was announced a little over three years ago.

TLDR: GitHub Organizations allows users to create a group that houses code under one banner. If you work on a product for a company, your company would have an organization in GitHub and all of your code would exist under it. Members of your company would belong to this organization and have access based on rights that you can associate with teams.

When this feature was announced it was a game changer, not only for GitHub but for its users.

Organizational Wikis

Soon after the birth of organizations on GitHub, I found myself wanting to house a bunch of information about our company and how we do things in a wiki. Wikis work great for this sort of thing, anyone can edit and the information just flows. The only problem is, right now GitHub only allows wikis to be created for a repository.

Wouldn’t it be great to point a new hire to your rganization’s wiki GitHub for them to get up to speed? Imagine all of the information on how to setup their computer, to company policies, videos, rake setup for projects, etc.

Instead of having this information fragmented across your repositories, filing cabinets, dropbox, the information would be centralized.

Workarounds

Absent this feature, one thing I have done in the past is create a repository on GitHub that is dedicated to this information and inside of it start your wiki there. While it is not the full blown feature, it is a workaround that will make the spirit of the feature work today.

Just a start

I think there is a lot that GitHub could do for organizations and this is just one idea. I think the ground here is still fresh and ready to be broken. Your organization inside of GitHub could be “hub” for everything your company does as it related to building software and one step towards this would be organizational wikis.

What are you thoughts? Good idea? Bad idea? How would you improve it? Leave a comment and let me know.

Invest in you, a strategy for leveling up

2013-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

In Technology, it is easy to fall behind. Just when you think you are up to speed on the latest advancements in your area (Web, Mobile, etc.) there is a new Open Source project being worked on that will make what you are doing easier or obsolete.

Reliance on your employer to make sure you are the best in your field is a failing idea. While some of us work for companies that will send their employees to training, to conferences, they will even let us purchase books and resources that will help us further ourselves, but still there are even more of us where this is not the case.

Do not expect others to invest in you. It may happen but it is not definite, this is why it is imperative that today you start investing in you.

Direction, not intention

We all start out with good intentions. We want to blog, we want to read, we want to learn more. But intentions are not enough. “Our direction will determine our destination, not our intentions.” - Andy Stanley

I have countless numbers of books on my shelf that I want to read. I have a pocket full of articles that I want to read. But at some point I must start.

Convinced? Okay let’s do this. Below is a strategy that I use to invest in myself along with some resources I use to do that.

Start with a strategy

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Find a time and place - You need a specific time and place to work on getting better at your craft. Having a dedicated time and place creates rhythm and promotes consistency.
A way to take notes - Some people may want to use Evernote, the Notes App but for me a good pen and a notebook work. Writing down ideas that come or scribbling down thoughts that will help you remember something is a great way to move forward.
An itch to scratch – Everyone needs a side project they are working on. This helps you vet new ideas on something that may be less important that an application work. It also affords you the opportunity to explore a new idea or technique on something smaller scale. This usually means quicker turnaround time.

Resources I use

I am a visual learner, the more I see the more it makes sense. Therefore most of the resources I use are screencast sites. These sites provide video content that allow you to learn a new idea, library or technique while watching someone demonstrate it.

Peepcode – A great screencast site that has helped expose me to newer technologies and help me learn more about others that I use. The play-by-play series has been extremely helpful as it lets you watch other Developers solve problems in about an hour. It is amazing what you can learn by watching others use their tools and problem solve.
Tekpub – Another screencast site that has some good videos on personal development, .NET and other topics.
NSScreencast – When I first got into iOS Development, this screencast proved to be worth its weight in gold. Ben does a great job of tackling a specific area of iOS Development and then shows you how it is done. It is kind of like the magician letting you in on how he performs his act.
Railscasts – If you are interested in learning Ruby/Rails Development then Ryan Bates is your man. Much like NSScreencast, Ryan takes a gem or library from the Ruby ecosystem and shows you how it works within Rails.
GitHub Explore – One of the more underrated features of GitHub is Explore. This feature allows you to browse top repositories across specific languages. I like to browse the languages I am interested in and see what repositories are trending. This helps me keep up to date with the latest work in the open source community and get new ideas for current and future projects.

Final thoughts

I hope this blog has inspired you to develop a plan for investing in yourself. Do not be quick to rely on others to help move yourself along in your career but instead take a stance today that you will determine your future by the choices you make.

I had a boss once tell me, “What happens if we invest in our employees and they leave?” To which I responded, “What happens if we don’t and they stay?”

You see, for employers this is why it is also imperative that you encourage your employees to invest in themselves and also help them do so. The stakes are too high and the cost could eventually be your company.

3 Tips for Launching an App

2013-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

Launching anything is scary. Launching something you have poured your heart into can be downright guy wrenching. The highs and lows, the ascents and the free falls, this is the life of launching.

You want people to love this thing you’ve worked so hard for. You want them to find joy in it the same way you do.

Scared?

In all of this uncertainty, here are a few tips from my experience in launching Apps that may help you clarify and enjoy the experience.

Define Success, Be Realistic

No one sets out in building an App thinking it won’t be the next big thing. Everyone wants to create the next Instagram.

But let’s be realistic here…

The odds of you or I creating the next Instagram are about as likely as you or I winning the lottery.

A healthy view of success for your App will make the launch process a lot easier.

Defining the win, creating realistic goals is key.

With Gitty I set a goal of 500 sales in the first week. This seemed realistic, it seemed attainable. Anything more than that number would have been terrific and anything short of it would be okay as well.

Partner Strategically

My next tip when launching an App is make sure you partner strategically.

You should know who the thought leaders, the influencers and leaders are in the arena where your app is being launched. After you have identified these people, you should try to reach out in a kind way and offer them a brief explanation and a free promo code for your app with no strings attached.

If they decide to take you up on your offer that’s a win. If the decided to share your App with their audience then that’s a success.

With enough of these types of irons in the fire, you are bound to get the word out about your App.

When I launched Gitty, I strategically targeted a few key influencers in the developer world and did just what I wrote above. Some people responded and loved the app and shared it with their friends and audience. Others, to my knowledge, did nothing which is perfectly fine.

My friend Tom McFarlin went as far as running a contest to give away a free copy of Gitty. This was great exposure which coupled with above added into more and more people hearing about my new App.

Stay The Course

My final tip for Launching an App is to Stay The Course. Releasing an App is a long arduous process. There will be highs and there will be lows. If your launch does not go quite the way you hoped it would, do not be afraid to keep moving forward.

By working on updates and making the App even better, this shows potential users that you are in this for the long haul and you will be rewarded over time.

When I first launched Gitty, the initial success was great but I did not hit all of my goals. Instead of focusing on what did not happen, I decided to take great joy in what did happen.

Users who purchased the App were loving it and there was still room for improvement. This by my definition of success was a success. I decided to stay the course and continue to make improvements and sales continued to come in.

Next Steps

When launching your next App, I hope you will consider my experiments and these tips to encourage you in the journey. Please feel free to leave a comment and share your launch experience or some tips for fellow readers.

Host a static site for free using GitHub

2013-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

Have you ever wanted to host a static HTML website but either did not have a hosting provider or the money to host? Well in this post, I am going to show you a few simple steps you can follow to get a static HTML website hosted by the great folks at GitHub

Requirements

There are a few things you will need to get started:

A GitHub account - You can signup here
A site written with HTML, CSS, JS.
Some knowledge of Git, but I try to remove that barrier in this post. Here’s a great resource to get started.

Getting Started

The first thing you will need to do is log into your GitHub account and create a new Repository. If you are new to Git, feel free to think of a Repository as just a folder filled with your code.

From here, you will need to give your Repository a name. Unless you know Git, you can feel free to ignore the other options.

GitHub uses a service called GitHub Pages to host your static site. To trigger this service, GitHub looks for a specific branch on your Repository named ‘gh-pages’ and attempts to serve the code there as a static site. If you are new to Git, think of a branch as a copy of your code living inside of your Repository.

So the next step is to create a branch called ‘gh-pages’ by clicking on the drop down called branch:master and typing ‘gh-pages’ into the field.

Now that you have a ‘gh-pages’ branch, it is time to create your content. If you are new to Git, we can do this directly from the browser. If you are a veteran of Git, then feel free to clone this repository and push your content.

Click on the plus icon next to your Repository’s name to create a new file called index.html

Add your content to the index.html file we’ve created.

The last thing that I like to do is to make the ‘gh-pages’ branch the default branch for the Repository. To do this, just click on settings for your Repository and adjust the property there.

Recap

After following the above steps, your index.html file will now be hosted by GitHub. The url to your site follows this convention: http://[my-github-username].github.io/

The URL to the site I walked you through creating can be found at http://mps.github.io/statictutorial/.

I have a few other sites I host up on GitHub that you can also check out:

If you have any questions about this tutorial please feel free to comment or reach out to me on Twitter.

Also remember to do good and not evil, using something like this is great for everyone. Abusing it with spam or other nefarious things is not encouraged or endorsed.

Thanks!

Gitty for GitHub Contest

2013-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

Today marks six weeks since the release of Gitty for GitHub and to celebrate, I am giving away a free copy of Gitty to one lucky reader.

If this is the first time you are hearing about Gitty, then here’s a list of some features you can expect:

Events and Activity

Stay up to date with the latest events for repositories you star and contribute to as well as all of your organizations’ activities. Gitty makes looking at these events beautiful and easy to follow.
Gitty allows you to easy see and read GitHub notifications with the deep linking you have come to expect.

Repositories, Users and Organizations

Easily access your private and public repositories’ code and issues.
Beautiful User and Organization profiles

Issues and Pull Requests

Keep up to date with the latest Issues and Pull Requests for your Repositories.
Open or close new issues with a pleasant commenting experience.
Easily merge pull requests

Search and Explore GitHub

Search for a new job via GitHub Jobs
Search users and repositories
Stay up to date with the GitHub Blog

Releasing Gitty was both a labor of love and joy. There is no better feeling than creating something and having people find value in it. I keep telling people that the best experience is not any money I make off of Gitty but the hundreds of people who have sent encouraging messages to me about how Gitty helps make their life easier and their development experience better.

To enter, just follow the steps below (tweet, follow) and you will be entered. The contest will run until July 3rd, so enter today!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Making iOS Deployment Easy

2013-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Recently I wrote about automating everything, you know taking those things that you do daily, weekly, monthly and making them easily reproducible. After reading it, you may have been asking yourself, “Matthew, what is a tangible way you do this everyday?” Well dear reader, here’s a good example:

I build apps in my free time like Gitty and BabyMe Slideshow but I also have built several other apps for people professionally. One service I use regularly and endorse heavily is TestFlight. TestFlight allows you to easily deploy your iOS app to a group of people for testing, Apple calls this Ad-Hoc deployment. With TestFlight it’s as easy as the user receives an email, registers their device and then receives an app they can test or play around with.

In fairness, TestFlight does a great job at building a user-friendly app that helps you, in a few clicks, deploy the application. But we are automaters, we do not want to remember those few clicks or the right questions to answer. We want to be able to type a command or click a file and be done with it.

Let me show you the code that I use and then I will break it down thereafter. Warning, for some this will be overwhelming and like drinking water through a fire hydrant. If you feel overwhelmed, feel free to give me a shout.

Click here to view the code.

To accomplish the automation we are using a language called Ruby and the first file is known as a Gemfile. If you are familiar with Ruby then this is where you declare your dependencies for Bundler.

We are using the Ruby gem called Shenzhen by Mattt Thompson. Shenzhen is the core library that will interact with Xcode, build our IPA and then interact with TestFlight for deployment.

The second file in the gist is the Rakefile. A Rakefile is a ruby code file that leverages tasks on Ruby’s Rake library. Rake is Ruby’s version of Make which allows you to easily execute a sequence of Ruby code to accomplish a task.

In our scenario there are four tasks:

buildipa
internal
release
rev

You may have noticed that internal and release have a dependency upon buildipa. If you were to run the internal command for instance using rake internal it would first build the ipa using buildipa and then release the IPA to TestFlight.

Let’s recap:

How do I deploy internally? rake internal

How do I deploy a release build? rake release

Two words, one command instead of a slew of steps. Automate everything…

(Kudos to my friend Jason Jarrett for helping develop and refine this process on a recent project we worked on together)

Deep not wide

2013-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

Almost 10 years ago I was graduating from college, about to get married to the love of my life and trying to figure out what my career would look like. My degree was in Computer Science and while I enjoyed the creative process of it there were definitely areas that did not peak my interest.

As I started to dream of the future, I felt this pressure to get in somewhere on the ground level, work hard and work my way up fast. It was like everyone in my life at the time said that was the way to go. And so I did…

A few years went by, I was being highly successful at my job but I could not help but wonder, “is this it?” Was the goal to become a great developer, work my way up to management and eventually run the company? While that may be the path for many, I could not help but wonder if there was a different way.

What if one could go really deep into their craft? Instead of trying to be good at everything, what if I could be great at a thing?

One of my personal heroes, Andy Stanley, says it like this: “Embrace your strengths, delegate your weaknesses.” What a brilliant way of putting it. Stop trying to be good at something you are not strong at. Focus all of that time, effort and energy towards going deep into your craft and see where that lands you.

In the world of Technology, we crave expertise. If we can find someone who’s an expert at a particular skill then that is a definite home run hire. What if we all stopped worrying about the latest and greatest technology and went really deep into just a few areas? I am not saying stop being a learner, but perhaps we spend too much time trying to get “okay” with a couple dozen of technologies instead of being an “expert” with a few.

This is exactly what I am doing right now in my career. I am doubling down with iOS, Objective-C, Ruby, C# and the Open Web. I want to become an expert in these areas. Sure I will learn something new and stay up with the market but all of my time effort and energy for the past few years has been focused on going deep and not wide with these four.

What are you going deep with today? Perhaps you are too focused on going wide in your career path and need to take a step back. Figure out what your passion is, pursue it with reckless abandon and make your life enjoyable as you embrace your strengths, focus your intent and go deep.

Automate Everything

2013-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

Being a developer affords me the opportunity of bending technology to make my life easier. One thing that this ability has taught me is that we should “Automate Everything”. What exactly do I mean by that?

Instead of logging in, clicking on five things, remembering a sequence of events and passwords…just automate it. Write a script with clear notes and be done with it.

By automating your life, you..

1) Eliminate human error.

2) Make life easier for someone to come behind you to perform the same task.

3) Free your mind from remembering odd random steps to performing a task and allow it to do other stuff.

I’ve been doing a lot of iOS work lately and I have tried to apply this approach there and also at my day job.

Using tools like Rake, Shenzhen and AWS I can easily build my Xcode projects, publish an IPA to TestFlight and update backend configuration files all with a few keystrokes. If I had to do each of these tasks by hand we are talking tens of minutes which add up to hours over the course of project sprints. That is more time for me to be writing code, designing features and testing the actual product.

So my question for you is, what in your life can you automate? Maybe you are not a developer but just start with that question and the snowball will start racing down the mountain. And to help you, there are companies built entirely around this concept of automating your life and others sharing too.

How WWDC 2013 paved the way for Apps on the Apple TV

2013-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

Disclaimer: I am an iOS Developer and these are just some thoughts surrounding the publicly available information.

On Monday, Tim Cook and the team at Apple unveiled OSX Mavericks and iOS 7 to the world. While there was no mention of the “iTV” or an Apple TV where one can write Apps for it, there were some subtle signs that point to its pending arrival.

One of the announced features for OSX Mavericks was the ability to use a High Definition Television as a fully functional display. Here’s the quote from Apple:

“With AirPlay and Apple TV, your HDTV works as a fully functional display. So while you’re using your TV to present a slideshow or stream a video lecture, you can take notes on your Mac or chat using Messages”

Now if one were to build an App for the Apple TV, how exactly would they go about deploying the App to the Device? Hmmm… I can see a scenario where I have my code written in Xcode and then choosing my Apple TV as the targeted device for deployment. Makes sense right?

While Apple was kicking off WWDC on Monday, Microsoft and Sony were also unveiling new features for their next generation consoles: Xbox One and the PS4. Apple’s chance to compete in this space is not by making a console, but bringing iOS gaming to the television through Apple TV. The next key announcement was that iOS 7 would officially support game controllers as well as a number of new API’s to make game development more powerful and easier.

Now I imagine there will be several games for the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad that will take advantage of these new abilities but how much more sense does it make to use a controller for a game being played on your television? Makes sense right?

While Apple did not come out and announce a new Apple TV on Monday, they did lay the foundation for a future update where Developers will be able to build Apps for it. I eagerly await this opportunity and look forward to the future where Apps on our televisions seem just as common as Apps on our phones do today.

3 steps to consider before making an App

2013-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

I recently had someone inquire about creating a new iOS App and I thought I would share some of my responses. Here are the three steps I encourage each person to consider before making an App.

1) Research - are there apps out there that already provide the features and functionality you desire? If so, how will your idea be better? If not, is there enough of a market to warrant the app investment?

2) Prototype - explore your idea down to the detail. You can do this with something as simple as PowerPoint. The idea behind prototyping is to layout visually what the app does. What does each screen look like? If I tap on this button where does it take me, etc.

3) Outline - take all of the visual information in step 2 and write it down. This information should be like taking a gallon of water and distilling it down into just a few drops. What does your app do? What problems will your app solve? What is the market for your app?

So before diving into App creation maybe you will stop a ponder these steps and I think you will either end up with a better start or perhaps figure out there is not a need to start.

Gitty for GitHub

2013-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

Today is a special day for me as I get the privilege to announce the release of Gitty for GitHub. Gitty is everything you love about GitHub right in your pocket. Access all of your Issues, Repositories and even search for new ones. I hope that Gitty becomes your go to way to use GitHub on the iPhone or iPod Touch.

If you are interested in checking it out you can purchase your copy here.

No app is released without the countless help of others so I have a few thank you’s.

God for giving me the talent and breath to create.
My wife and family for allowing me free time to make this beautiful product.
My team of testers who were awesome throughout the process in providing feedback and bug reports.
All of the open source projects listed in the application that helped make it great.
GitHub for making a great product that millions of developers love to use daily.
Apple for creating a great device and ecosystem for developers.
Shaun Moynihan for a great app icon.

Some Gitty statistics:

402 commits, first was on 4/6/2013
65,148 lines of code
122 issues by 10 testers
19 PR’s
1 Developer

I plan on doing a series of posts in the future talking about how I built Gitty. Stay tuned and happy GitHubbin’

A .NET Developer in an iOS World

2013-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Last night I had the wonderful opportunity of speaking at a local user group about iOS Development from a .NET Developer’s prospective. iOS Development can be pretty intimidated, but last’s night goal was to encourage everyone to give it a shot with some nice steps of making that easier.

If you are interested in checking out the slides, you can do so here.

Here are a list of links I mentioned in my talk last night:

Resources

Open Source

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or send me a tweet on Twitter - @strickland

Enjoy!

Free WordPress Hosting with Heroku

2012-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

Note: Before you get started hosting your next WordPress site for free, you will need to know how to use Git and Heroku.

Hosting Wordpress on Heroku is not only free but easy thanks to this repository on GitHub. By completing the following steps you will end up with a free WordPress site hosted on Heroku using Postgres for the backend instead of MySQL. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments or send me a message on Twitter.

Installation

Clone the repository from Github

$ git clone git://github.com/mhoofman/wordpress-heroku.git

With the Heroku gem, create your app

$ cd wordpress-heroku
$ heroku apps:create mycoolsite
> Creating mycoolsite... done, stack is cedar
> http://mycoolsite.herokuapp.com/ | git@heroku.com:mycoolsite.git
> Git remote heroku added

Add a database to your app

$ heroku addons:add heroku-postgresql:dev
> Adding heroku-postgresql:dev to strange-turtle-1234... done, v2 (free)
> Attached as HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_COLOR
> Database has been created and is available
> Use `heroku addons:docs heroku-postgresql:dev` to view documentation

Promote the database (replace COLOR with the color name from the above output)

$ heroku pg:promote HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_COLOR
> Promoting HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_COLOR to DATABASE_URL... done

Create a new branch for any configuration/setup changes needed

$ git checkout -b production

Copy the wp-config.php

$ cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

Clear .gitignore and commit wp-config.php

$ >.gitignore
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "initial commit for wordpress"

Deploy to Heroku

Deploying your site to Heroku is fairly simple. Because you are working in the production branch and you want your code to live in master branch on Heroku, you will issue the following command.

$ git push heroku production:master
> -----> Heroku receiving push
> -----> PHP app detected
> -----> Bundling Apache v2.2.19
> -----> Bundling PHP v5.3.6
> -----> Discovering process types
>        Procfile declares types -> (none)
>        Default types for PHP   -> web
> -----> Compiled slug size is 24.9MB
> -----> Launcing... done, v5
>        http://mycoolsite.herokuapp.com deployed to Heroku
>
> To git@heroku:mycoolsite.git
> * [new branch]    production -> master 

After deployment, navigate to your url that you setup and walk through the normal WordPress installation steps.

Updating

Inevitably you are going to want to update your installation of WordPress as time goes on. The maintainer of this repository is pretty timely in updating it for future releases of WordPress. You will want to watch this repository for updates on GitHub and then follow these steps to update your installation.

$ git pull origin master # Get the latest

Using the same branch name from our installation:

$ git checkout production # Checkout your local branch
$ git merge master # Merge latest
$ git push heroku production:master # Update Heroku with your local changes.

WordPress needs to update the database. After push, navigate to:

http://your-app-url.herokuapp.com/wp-admin

WordPress will prompt for updating the database to correspond to the newest version and then you’ll be finished.

Adding Themes and Plugins

Adding Themes and Plugins to your WordPress site that is hosted on Heroku is simple. First add the folder for your theme or plugin to the appropriate directory ~/wp-content/themes

~/wp-content/plugins. Next you will need to commit your changes to your local git repository and then deploy to Heroku.

$ git add --all
$ git commit -m "adding my cool theme/plugin"
$ git push heroku production:master

Custom Domains

Heroku allows you to add custom domains to your site hosted with them. To add your custom domain, enter in the follow commands.

$ heroku domains:add www.example.com
> Added www.example.com as a custom domain name to myapp.heroku.com

You’ll also want to cover the non “www” side of the url.

$ heroku domains:add example.com
> Added example.com as a custom domain name to myapp.heroku.com

Once Heroku recognizes your custom domain(s) you’ll then need to setup separate DNS A records for the following ip addresses to point to your domain:

101.163.44
101.145.87
129.212.2

Once the DNS A records propagate, then simply test out your change by hitting the url in the browser to make sure you are good to go. If you are in need of cheap DNS hosting then I would recommend DNSimple.

The last step is updating your WordPress installation to recognize the new domain. You’ll need to open up the WordPress Admin Dashboard and go to Settings –> General. From there just update the URL for the WordPress address and you’re done.

If you find yourself running into problems, there is a guide posted in the Heroku Docs which can be found here.

Summary

I hope this post on helping you get free WordPress hosting on Heroku up and running was helpful. If you found this useful, please feel free to share this article with your friends and followers. Thanks!

Easily run Ruby tests with Sublime Text 2

2012-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

One of my favorite text editors is Sublime Text 2. Not only does it provide great syntax highlighting but it also allows you to execute bash commands from the program. In this blog, I want to walk you through how to setup Sublime Text 2 to easily run your Ruby tests.

Installation

First you will need to install Sublime Text 2 which you can download here.

Next, go to your Sublime Text 2 Packages directory

OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 2/Packages
Windows: %APPDATA%/Sublime Text 2/Packages/
Linux: ~/.config/sublime-text-2/Packages/

and clone the repository using the command below:

$ git clone https://github.com/maltize/sublime-text-2-ruby-tests.git RubyTest

Color Setup

Edit the file “Theme - Default/Widget.sublime-settings” in the Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 2/Packages directory:

$ subl "Theme - Default/Widget.sublime-settings"

In that file, change

"color_scheme": "Packages/Theme - Default/Widgets.stTheme"

"color_scheme": "Packages/RubyTest/TestConsole.tmTheme"

Usage

Run single ruby test: Command-Shift-R
Run all ruby tests from current file: Command-Shift-T
Run last ruby test(s): Command-Shift-E
Show test panel: Command-Shift-X
Check RB, ERB file syntax: Alt-Shift-V
Switching between code and test:
- Single View: Command-.
- Split View: Command+Ctrl+.

Keys: ‘Command’ (OSX) ‘Ctrl’ (Linux / Windows)

Hide the WordPress admin bar in one line of code

2012-06-19T00:00:00+00:00

Add the following to your functions.php file

A great way to overcome a browser plugin

2012-06-19T00:00:00+00:00

Nanny

2012-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

I wanted to archive the notes that I took in anticipation for speaking at my Grandmother’s (Nanny) funeral in 2010. Estelle Ingram was a very special lady and as I reflect on these words I am reminded even more of that truth. Below are my thoughts on her life that I used to share on the day of her funeral.

Over the last few days I have had many people reach out to our family expressing their condolences for our loss. One thing that continues to resonate with me is that our loss here on earth is heaven’s gain. And on December 23rd, heaven gained in a big way.

I am reminded of the words in the song “You hold me now” that say, “No weeping, no hurt or pain, no suffering, you hold me now, you hold me now.” And that is the great news today. As my grandmother stepped into eternity, she met Jesus face to face. There was no more suffering, there was no more pain. From now on she is held in the arms of her Savior.

Before I share a few moments that I had with my grandmother that will last with me forever, I do want to say a few words to my mom, my aunts and uncle, their spouses, and my entire family who have loved and supported Nanny in these last few years as her health declined. I say to you all what I’m sure she would say if she were here and that is she loves you. She would want you to know how thankful she is for the way you all cared for her. She would recall John 15:13 where Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends”. That is exactly what you all did day after day, month after month; you laid aside your life for hers. Thank you for all you’ve done, thank you for loving her the way did.

In our lives we all have those special people that leave lasting impressions on us and my grandmother was no exception. Her infectious smile, her love for other people and her commitment to prayer are each testaments to her great life. She also had those little qualities that we all cherish. From her morning ritual of cookies and coffee for breakfast, to her way of keeping us all up to date on one another’s life and to those phone calls just when you needed them.

God had this way of using my grandmother in my life. When I was down or needed a pick me up, our paths would cross at just the right time. I can recall numerous times where she and I would be in the car together on our way to church or back to her house and God would speak to me through my grandmother. Our conversations would often go like this:

“Matthew, I want you to pray for this person. They really need prayer right now. Would you pray for them with me?”

“I will Nanny, thank you for letting me know. Let’s pray.”

Here was a lady who did not have much according to earthly standards, but one thing she did have was a heart for others. After our time together, I would sit in my car and cry out to God thanking Him for using her to speak to me. Thanking God for her unselfishness and for her heart.

My last moments with my grandmother were special and ones that I will treasure always. It was just three of us in the room, you know…God, me and her. I rubbed her forehead and told her that I loved her. She could barely open her eyes at this point but as she did, I told her to just rest. I told her that I was going to pray. I thanked Jesus for my grandmother and the time he allowed me to spend with her. I thanked Him for the influence that she had on my life and on others. I asked Jesus to comfort my grandmother and take away her pain. And true to His Word, Jesus took away her pain just 5 hours later.

Thank you all for being here today to honor my grandmother. She was a great lady and her legacy will live on within us all.

Plan(s)

2011-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

As we begin to turn the chapter on what was 2011, if you are anything like me then you start to reflect on what the previous year brought.

For some it was the failed resolutions - the weight you gained instead of lost, the plan you failed to stick to or the big dream that turned into a terrible nightmare. No matter the scenario, it is very easy to get discouraged when things do not turn out the way you had hoped.

Like a great shot of espresso, the new year brings about a jolt energy because we can all just start over. We can dream new dreams, plan even bigger plans and yes desire to lose those extra 10-15 pounds that we’ve stowed away for the winter.

But for many these things just scratch the surface, this failing goes a little bit deeper. The idea of not losing weight seems silly when faced with your dilemna. You dreamed big, you fell flat on your face and you feel that you have missed your one chance. Trust me I have been there.

As a follower of Christ, just when I think I have missed out on God’s plan for my life I am reminded of this verse:

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

-Jeremiah 29:11

I love that God chose to make the word plan plural. I cherish the truth that God does not just have one plan for my life but many plans.

So as you embark on what will be a new year with new beginnings, I encourage you to embrace the truth that God is the God of many plans. No matter the circumstance you are in, no matter how daunting the task may be, God is there with you and he has a plan even bigger and better that the one that failed. Our response is to just surrender and humble ourselves as God begins to let us in on what that new plan will be.