Zetetic Blog

Tempo Maintenance Tonight

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:23:30 GMT

Starting at 11pm EDT tonight, Tues July 7th, Tempo may be briefly unavailable while we update the application. We’re moving the beta to production!

Prowl

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:10:44 GMT

I have somewhat consistently maintained that the Apple Push Notification Service for iPhone developers is a really bad kludge. I still stand by that! It’s a poor stand-in for the local system scheduler that’s already on the device.

That said, there’s a proper tool for every job, and APNS is absolutely perfect for Prowl:

Prowl is a Growl client for the iPhone. Notifications from your Mac can be sent to your iPhone over push, with a full range of customization and grace you expect…. As soon as a Growl notification pops up on your Mac, Prowl will forward it to your iPhone or iPod Touch over the push notification service found in iPhone OS 3.0. Which notifications are pushed is configurable, allowing only the important messages to be delivered.

The possibilities there are really huge. Not to mention that it’s a geek’s dream, and perfect for sysadmins. Now you never need to miss those sweet nothings your desktop whispers in your ear when you’re out and about tolerating the company of other fleshy ones. Imagine:

unix box: OMG disk is full!
mail server: OMG OMG OMG I/O SPIKE!

All kidding aside, this is a nice bridge to between web/internet services on a dedicated connection and mobile devices, and it in no way involves text messages. Anything that cuts into the bottom line of the Text Message Tax Collectors makes me smile.

Another recent innovation with APNS is the arrival of the first middleman, Urban Airship, which handles the details of maintaining state with APNS so you don’t have to construct the infrastructure yourself.

_Image snagged from the Prowl website

Deep Thought

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:32:54 GMT

The Well was the first social network.

Although, I’m just being a contrarian to the social network hypers. The good old BBS probably pre-dates the Well, anyway.

Tempo's New Look: An Introduction

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:01:03 GMT

In preparation for taking Tempo’s new design out of beta and moving it to production, we’ve put together this overview of what has changed.

Will I still be able to use the old interface?

No, this is it! We’ve spent quite a lot time and hard work responding to your feedback and incorporating it into the new design. We know it’s not going to make everyone happy, but we’re pretty certain that after you use it for a little while, you won’t miss the old skin.

We are planning to make the move as early as next week, so if you still haven’t taken a look at the new version, if you still haven’t told us about that one thing that’s missing that you really need, now’s the time to try it out and get in touch!

The Layout

The basic layout consists of a left-side navigation bar, a footer (unseen in the image above) and desktop-window-like modules in the main content area. What you are looking at above is the Time screen, which is new to Tempo. Well, sorta.

In the initial version of Tempo, there was one screen that did just about everything – entering new time, reporting, viewing, exporting, etc. This became more and more cumbersome as we added features. For starters, you had to modify the current report view just to see your own time! In the second major revision of Tempo, we tried splitting a ‘My Time’ screen off of the main reporting screen, but it was poorly received. Our design skills just weren’t up to snuff, so we reverted.

In the new design, however, I think we’ve really nailed it, thanks to nGen Works. The Time screen gives you stats pertaining to your recent performance and a full listing of all your time (reflected in the API, as well).

It also allows you to easily switch between full-form entry of time, with all the various options laid out for you, and the simple command-line entry that we prefer here at Zetetic:

In the image above you can see the new tagging setup we blogged about recently, which includes support for Suggested Tags on a project! Here’s the command-line entry form, on the same Time screen:

One other big change here is in the table showing entered time. Have you ever found yourself looking at a data set, and thinking, “Hmm, what else is on this project?” Or, “I’d like to see all entries this goofball has tagged with ‘foo’.” Now, it’s as simple as clicking on the labels on an entry to dial up a new report on the Reports screen, fitting that criteria!

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we discuss reports, let’s take a look at another one of the major design changes:

The Sidebar

One of the biggest changes is the introduction of a sidebar for navigating the application. There were a couple of things we wanted to emphasize here, aside from providing quick and easy access to the main areas of interest on the site.

The Add Time link produces a modal dialog (sample) allowing you to enter new time from anywhere in the application, even the Project or Account screens. Your Reports links out to a full listing of each of your saved reports, with creation dates and details, and the report links below it provide you quick and easy access to those reports you need to run at the end of each billing cycle.

Reports

The Reports screen is what used to be the one-stop-shop for all reporting functions in Tempo. This is probably the interface that changed most dramatically:

Still at your fingertips alongside Tempo’s powerful reporting are the charts, exports, invoicing, locking, batch-tagging, and saved reports features. There’s something about these various features that always threw new users, and hopefully this new design makes it clearer: they all pertain to the current report! E.g. If I dial in all time billed to Spacely Sprockets for the current quarter and then click on Export or Invoice, I’ll be exporting or invoicing all the time billed to Spacely Sprockets for the current quarter!

For those of you who are used to Tempo, these functions haven’t changed much, beyond their skin:

Projects

We needed to give the Projects screen some love to bring it into the fold of the new design, and also to pave the way for new features. The project listing itself isn’t new, but hopefully breaking out the team management helps to make things a little bit more obvious for new users:

Coming soon: individual project dashboards! Each project will have its own page where we can provide project-specific tracking and statistics.

Account

Finally, the account screen got a facelift. This is where all manner of things are handled, from billing to user profile to account preferences, it was all here and it was getting to be a long mess! This time around we’ve sectioned things off to make it way easier to work with.

That about wraps up the major changes in this round of hacking. It’s mostly design-centric, aside from some non-insignificant API changes you should be aware of, if you have your own software that interacts with Tempo’s API. We’re not done yet, there’s still more tweaking to do, more fixes to implement that have been sent in by our always-helpful customers! There’s still time to comment on the changes and make your voice heard, please get in touch right away if you haven’t already; we’re looking to push this out next week, barring any show-stoppers.

New article published: migrating data from Lite to Paid iPhone applications

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:48:33 GMT

Stephen has a new tutorial published over on Mobile Orchard, in which he introduces a means of migrating the data from a so-called “Lite” application to the paid version. A lot of apps don’t provide this facility, and others use (or suggest using) a server component, which can add considerable development overhead. Our solution, which we use for Strip and Strip Lite, is really easy to implement and the migration happens on the device itself. Check it out and let us know what you think!

Quote: Only the Art is Irreducible

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:45:06 GMT

Musician and writer Tris McCall:

michael jackson’s death may hasten the day when we put aside the garbage once and for all and hear only the music. but that was bound to happen anyway. gossip is gas and dissipates; only the art is irreducible.

A tremendous and inspiring thought.

Fresh Gear

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:24:34 GMT

I’m very excited, our man Bret Morgan from Bands On a Budget just sent us a pic modeling our new t-shirt:

I know it’s not as design-intense as those South-East-Asian Zetetic threads (I never did figure out how to order from them), but I’m stoked. We just ordered these to have for friends and fam, but if you’ve got to have one, hit us up.

The Unofficial iPhone SDK Feedback Project

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:18:54 GMT

Now this strikes me as a very good idea:

...there isn’t an acceptable way for iPhone developers to constructively provide feedback with gravity.

Sure, Apple takes bug reports. However, the system is effectively opaque. Is the submitter alone with his/her issue, or does it effect a silent majority of developers? Furthermore, while bugs are objectively resolvable, they’re a subset of the much larger category of subjective feedback, e.g., policy/behavior changes.

There is evidence that Apple responds to constructive feedback: They dropped the NDA, they’ve reversed app rejections (e.g., Eucalyptus), and there are reports that they actively try to avoid bad blood.
So, to provide the iPhone developer community with a mechanism to collectively submit constructive feedback with gravity to Apple, I’m pleased to announce: The Unofficial iPhone SDK Feedback Project

I’ve already created a nugget of feedback, go vote it up and help out your fellow devs!

Rocking the People

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:05:22 GMT

This post is a tad off-topic, but I know some of us share this sphere of interest. I recently got a great write-up for a show my band played in Brooklyn:

There are no airy disco beats, no acoustic jams, and certainly no taking of prisoners as Ben Franklin is a live act that goes for the jugular with every song. Even the borderline kitschy, “Timmeh,” dedicated to our Treasury Secretary Tim Gieger [sic], is a sludge rock tune that sounds like Dinosaur Jr.’s J. Macis if he ever got the rocks removed from his mouth and asked, better yet demanded, “Where are my taxes?!”

Not bad. I didn’t know that we could be described as “neopunk,” and I never would have thought “sludge rock,” but this is not a review to complain about.

Rocking the Podcasts

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:04:36 GMT

I spend quite a bit of time in front of a screen all day hacking away, so I love to put on WNYC in the mornings, sip my pot of coffee and get to work.

Lately, however, I’ve taken to following more and more podcasts. This morning, on the walk from Greenpoint to Williamsburg Coworking I found myself listening to Stack Overflow, which is getting more and more entertaining as the weeks go by. The guest on the current episode is Damien Katz of Couch DB fame, who we saw give an incredibly inspiring talk at Ruby Fringe last year. The conversation ranges from fascinating computer science to some lively anecdotes about IBM (“full of douchebags”), Erlang, and Lotus, which keeps re-appearing in tech conversations lately. I’m only 40 minutes in, and it’s been fascinating.

Yes, I know I’m a nerd. But if you’re in the business, this is pretty interesting stuff. And we are totally in the business.

Another ‘cast that I look forward to every week is Dan Grigsby’s Mobile Orchard Podcast, focusing on iPhone development and the iTunes App Store. Dan keeps the topics very technology focused, but some of my favorite moments are when the guests (who are always iPhone developers) and Dan (a great developer himself) go into the business aspect of things. Few people have such a magnetic focus on market trends and data, and it also frequently turns up in Dan’s writings. Full disclosure – we were interviewed recently for this one.

And then there’s Savage Love, which is not even a little bit tech-related; it’s Dan Savage’s relationship advice column gone wild. Not safe for children, no, but very, very entertaining. This one can get a bit distracting, I’ll admit, but I absolutely cannot help but listen every week, it’s great.