Why the iPhone?

Posted on May 4, 2009 by MXH

Since I’m starting iPhone development, and will be discussing it here, it seems appropriate to talk about why I chose the platform. It’s not perfect, but it’s got some features which make it compelling to me as a developer and entrepreneur. Here’s a quick overview of the good and bad points of the platform, as I see them.

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Crash Anecdote

Posted on May 3, 2009 by MXH

Some time ago, I had a Windows box that was plagued by random reboots.  These weren’t crashes, or bluescreens, or lockups:  I would be typing away at the computer and then, suddenly, the screen would go black, I’d hear the floppy drive seeking, there would be a POST beep, and then I’d see my computer booting up again.  This was mysterious.

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Taipan!

Posted on May 2, 2009 by MXH

Remember "Taipan!"? It is a classic (c. 1982) trading game set in the 1860’s Far East. It’s one of those minimalist games from the early days of PCs that are far more absorbing and addictive than they have any right to be. I have fond memories of the game, dating back to the days when I had an Apple //e.

Fortunately, a fellow named Jay Link also likes the game, and has produced two implementations of it:

The browser implementation only supports trading; it lacks pirates, and most of the other random events found in the original game. It suffers for that, but it’s still quite addictive.

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April Retrospective

Posted on May 1, 2009 by MXH

Here are the complete statistics on visits to my puzzle pages during the month of April:

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Google Gadgets (IE)

Posted on April 30, 2009 by MXH

I’ve spent the last few days getting my puzzle Gadget to work in Internet Explorer. In order to make the Gadget work in IE, I had to avoid one questionable practice, and code in one outrageous hack. Today, I’d like to talk about both.

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Cross Browser Testing

Posted on April 29, 2009 by MXH

I’ve been using the crossbrowsertesting.com web service to debug my IE Gadget woes. CBT.com offers browser-based (Java) VNC connections to virtual(?) machines featuring a wide variety of OSes and browsers. You can use try out the service for free (although you are restricted to 5 minute sessions). I’ve only used it a little, but it seems to work well.

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Showstopper

Posted on April 28, 2009 by MXH

“Showstopper” bugs – bugs which demand your attention, which hold up forward progress – aren’t terribly common.  Most things can be put off, worked around, “featurized”, or discarded if you don’t want to deal with them right away.  Every now and then, though, you get something special.

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Buttons!

Posted on April 27, 2009 by MXH

A quick recommendation for you:  Cool Text is a nice little web tool that you can use to create buttons for your site.  Its only real downside is that it has 1200 fonts available, many of which are awful; you can spend a lot of time picking one out.  Once you get past that, however, you can use it to produce just about any button art you might need.

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I Love My Keyboard

Posted on April 26, 2009 by MXH

Following up on yesterday’s “design that makes me happy” theme, let me briefly mention my keyboard.  I’ve got one of Apple’s ulta-thin aluminum keyboards – specifically the USB version w/ numeric keypad.  It’s a joy to use.  It feels great, it looks great, and it doesn’t collect nearly as much dirt as a normal keyboard.  I love the little green LED in the caps lock key.

The thing is, this is a $50 keyboard in a market filled with perfectly fine keyboards in the sub-$10 price range.  Why spend the extra $40?  Because it makes me happy.  That’s good design, and the fact that it’s a cliche to point this sort of thing out when it comes to Apple products makes it no less true.

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I Love My Printer

Posted on April 25, 2009 by MXH

Something unambiguously positive today:  I’ve got a Canon Pixma MP610 printer that makes me very happy.  The MP610 is, in most respects, a typical and serviceable all-in-one inkjet photoprinter.  It does its thing well enough – I’m not enough of a printer geek to get into its specs – but its real greatness lies in its design.

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