links for 2009-01-31

  • When work-for-hire is abused, it is legalized theft and hurts the entire design industry. To prevent abuse, it's necessary to understand the true definition of work-for-hire.
  • This is an installment of Star Wars Yoga. We are following a correspondence between George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, and Steve Jones, Senior VP, LucasFilm Marketing and Brand Strategy. Currently, to shore up the flagging brand, Mr. Jones has proposed launching a line of Star Wars branded yoga.
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Skadoo: PhoneGap-based app now in iTunes

Skadoo is a PhoneGap based application that is now available in the iTunes store. The app should be considered very beta… though (developers take note!) Apple doesn’t allow you to include the word “beta” in any graphics, description or application meta-data.

In short, say its “Phonegap-based” means that this app was built using HTML, CSS and Javascript, and then wrapped up in a native binary iPhone application. I’ve blogged about this before, when I showed how to turn a blog into a native iPhone app in 10 steps.

The full server app is still under development (server queries are VERY slow), but in short, it is a “people” search engine, for finding various profiles of someone online based on searching for their name. I, through my work with Oliver+Coady, was hired to build the iPhone App and get it into the App Store ASAP. PhoneGap was the best solution to get the job done quickly.

Skadoo in iTunes

Development time was < 1 week... .it took longer to get the app into the store than it did to build it! The app uses JQuery for server interaction and the UI was built in Dashcode. Another quick interesting thing about this app, is that it uses HTML 5 Database to persist search results and Safari/Webkit extensions for CSS translation and transitions. Both working pretty well, though the translations are about 4x faster on the iPhone Simulator than on my iPod Touch. Get Skadoo for your iPhone today!

links for 2009-01-26

  • Good deeds do get rewarded! If you know someone who’s been toiling in the open source vineyards, developing software that’s helping nonprofits succeed, check out the Tides Foundation Pizzigati Prize, a $10,000 annual award for outstanding contributions to software in the public interest. The competition, judged by a panel of national leaders in public interest computing, is now entering its third year. The application deadline for this year’s prize: March 2nd, 2009. You can find out more in our Prize Information section of this website.
  • A guitar’s scale length is calculated by measuring the distance from the front edge of the nut, where it butts against the end of the fingerboard, to the center of the 12th (octave) fret, then doubling that measurement.
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Categorized as Awareness

links for 2009-01-23

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Categorized as Awareness