May 2012
1 post
Buscouver Numbers after 1 month
The numbers for my iPhone app Buscouver, and some discussion about business models for locally focused apps.
Costs:
My own time: about $15K worth if I were billing it.
Upfront costs of around ~$1000 for design work.
Income:
So far, just over a month: $410
My reddit post got me to #2 in the Canada navigation charts. For one glorious day I made $100.
Feedback has been positive. The latest...
November 2011
1 post
Reporting on Irish people abroad.
I’m leaving in December. To be sure, I’m not the typecast can’t-get-a-job refugee we keep hearing about. I’m starting to wonder if many actually are.
I make a living and I’m generally very happy and satisfied with my life.
With that shameful admission out of the way, I will now complain about the media for a while. If your coping strategy is to ignore Irish...
January 2011
2 posts
“There is a difference between questioning policy and questioning motives....”
– Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002
One Out Of The Top Drawer: When will the App Store... →
topdrawerapps:
So it’s no secret that the App Store is about to reach ten billion downloads.
But when?
Pádraig got in touch with me on Friday evening to let me know he’d found a way to process the data behind Apple’s app counter to determine when we might reasonably expect the milestone to be reached…
December 2010
1 post
Be Careful What You Wish For
There’s been plenty of talk lately about ‘Cutting The Fat’ in the Dáil. It’s a line item on Fintan O’Toole’s petition. Martin Naughton’s argument that the Dáil should be 1/2 the size gets a front page article in the Irish Times.
Aside from the symbolic cost saving from downsizing the Dáil what effects would a smaller Dáil have? Would the composition...
April 2010
1 post
iPhone 4.0 Predictions
Here are my predictions and analysis of the rumours before the OS 4.0 event later on today.
Notifications
The notification system badly needs a UI overhaul. This is one area where we can all agree that Android and Pre do it better.
Springboard
This is the trademark look and feel for the iPhone OS line of products, so Apple shouldn’t change it much, but there are some limitations that...
February 2010
2 posts
Neven Mrgan's tumbl: Please Don't →
Martin Pittenauer doesn’t like Please Rob Me, a website which gathers tweets from people who are not at home at the time of tweeting; the point is ostensibly raising awareness about the dangers of location broadcasting. Their premise is that sharing this information will get you robbed. Martin:
…
Notes from Installing an SSD on a Mac Pro
Inspired by this, I ordered an Intel X-25M 160GB SSD hard drive for my Mac Pro.
Some notes:
I followed this guide.
The drive comes with a 3.5” plate, but I didn’t realise this and bought a separate one too.
I did my best to fit it into one of my 2 spare SATA hard drive enclosures in my Mac Pro, but the 3.5” plates situate the SSD connectors in the centre instead of to the...
January 2010
3 posts
The worlds are colliding
mrgan:
Epic knowledge dropped by stevenf tonight:
In the New World, computers are task-centric. We are reading email, browsing the web, playing a game, but not all at once. Applications are sandboxed, then moats dug around the sandboxes, and then barbed wire placed around the moats. As a direct result, New World computers do not need virus scanners, their batteries last longer, and they...
Resolved!
I have removed my previous post. I would like to clarify a few points and explain how Philip and I solved this. The potential long-term impact on Philip’s reputation of my posting that entry is serious. He took a shortcut that he shouldn’t have taken, but it’s not exactly the crime of the century. He has admitted his mistake and we’ve come to an agreement on how to make...
December 2009
1 post
The Mobile Edition of the Irish Times
The Irish Times launched a scaled down mobile edition of the newspaper today at m.irishtimes.com. Here are my thoughts on it.
“Device Neutral”
From the blog post announcement:
“We’ve decided to launch a device-neutral site which will render well on iPhones, BlackBerries, Nokias and everything else.”
It won’t render well on iPhones. It will render like the 1998...
August 2009
1 post
Snow Leopard Upgrade
I recently upgraded my Mac Book Air to Snow Leopard. As advertised, there’s not a huge amount in the way of new features, mainly it delivers the snappy.
Anyway, I ran into a few to-be-expected hitches along the way, and thought I’d share the resolutions.
It includes PHP 5.3. If you’re using the current production version of Code Igniter, you’re in trouble here — the...
December 2008
1 post
Christmas Future
At our wedding last October, Emily and I suggested to all of our guests that they should consider making donations through christmasfuture.org in lieu of a traditional wedding gift. This resulted in about $3000 being lodged in our Christmas Future account which we then distributed among a number of projects, such as these:
CORE International , Microcredit, 3 Year Program.
Technology Preparation...
November 2008
1 post
August 2008
2 posts
July 2008
1 post
The Missing iPhone Games
The iTunes App Store became available last Thursday with the release of iTunes 7.7
When iPhone developers upload their apps to the store they choose from a range of price bands and countries in which to sell their applications. I can’t think of too many reasons why developers would want to limit their number of potential customers, but there may be some valid considerations, such as:
...
June 2008
5 posts
WatchTour of our new place
The Lisbon Treaty was about procedures, not...
I’m not going to try and explain the treaty because this site already does a good job of that.
In this post, I mean to analyse aspects of the campaign; it is not my aim to persuade anyone to adopt my opinion on the treaty. Anyone who has met their responsibility to inform themselves and who has exercised their right to vote deserves to have their choice respected.
As I see it, the issue...
iPhone 3rd Party Applications
Building a successful ‘ecosystem’ is a Big deal. In business terms, the word ‘ecosystem’ means free infinite money forever (see Microsoft). It’s very hard to make an ecosystem though. One of the reasons for this is that the platform must be opened up to people outside of the organisation’s control but, at the same time, standards must somehow be maintained....
3 tags
IMAP, iPhone & Apple Mail
Since I set up IMAP with Gmail, I have had to deal with having two copies of each message. This seems to be because Mail.app likes to keep its own copy outside of the gmail IMAP folder structure.
Anyway, I have managed to fix the problem by following these steps:
1. Do what this says.
2. Make a Smart Mailbox that excludes the following:
the mapped gmail inbox
the mapped gmail sent items
...
May 2008
1 post
April 2007
5 posts
WatchWill Ferrell’s Landlord.
Saturday Night Live: Chronicles of Narnia →
I haven't read this effin thing either. →
Will Ferrell Movie Generator →
