iWonder Designs A (one man) team of designers and developers specializing in web applications

1Sep/10Off

Well. That was fast, Oracle

9-1-2010 2-56-21 PM

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31Aug/10Off

PyCharm even does GQL analysis

I will never stop being amazed by PyCharm apparently.  It even does GQL analysis:

Here’s the problem GQL query:

8-31-2010 7-00-49 PM

And here’s the fixed GQL query:

8-31-2010 7-01-01 PM

Nice.  Please ignore the typo in the function name.  PyCharm has not yet shown the ability to read my mind (Note to JetBrains: get on that).

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31Aug/10Off

webOS 2.0 and C++

And, with that, webOS suddenly becomes very interesting:

Today, you can use the webOS Plug-in Development Kit (PDK) to build games and immersive apps in C/C++. But the feature that gives the PDK its name—the ability to build C/C++ plug-ins for your HTML/JavaScript/CSS apps—is still in beta as of 1.4.5.

This feature will exit beta in webOS 2.0, opening the door for you to distribute apps that incorporate PDK plug-ins. Using plug-ins, you can more easily port app logic from other platforms while leveraging the Mojo Framework to give users a familiar interface and integrate seamlessly into webOS.

via Intro to webOS 2.0 - Palm Developer Center.

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30Aug/10Off

This is not a story

In my continuing struggle to find quality tech reporting from anyone other than Ars Technica, I was dismayed to read this little tidbit from a techcruch "story" today:

In fact, I called Google PR to give them a heads up on this story and that call failed too.

(emphasis mine).  That's from Arrington talking about him having trouble with Google Voice.  No, this isn't a story.  This is Arrington using his soapbox to voice a technical support problem.  Please don't make it out to be anything more than that.

He continues with some potentially real news a little bit later:

From what I’m hearing this isn’t a short term surge issue, either. There are issues with Google’s core infrastructure conflicting with the type of system Google Voice needs to operate effectively, multiple sources have told me. And Google to date hasn’t made the investment needed to build a proper back end to the service that scales. That doesn’t really work for me as a user.

Okay, that's better I guess.  But this vague mention of backend problems does not a story make either.  This is the seed of a story that was rushed out because the author was frustrated.

I, too, am a little frustrated but not with Google Voice (which has always worked flawlessly for me, by the way).  I'm frustrated with fake tech "reporting".  I mean, it's a blog.  A blog is where you share your opinion and occasionally mix in some facts but lets not call it a collection of "stories".  Doing that is an insult to Ars Technica and any other online publication that spends time filling their articles with salient, detailed information.

Also, I really like Arrington's opinions.  I think he's an insightful tech blogger whose opinions I value.  But lately I've gotten a little touchy about bloggers masquerading as journalists and that one word in Arrington's blog entry rubbed me the wrong way.

via Google Voice Is A Hot Mess Right Now.

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29Aug/10Off

Fiz on iPad using SketchBook Pro

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28Aug/10Off

Commodore 64 is back

Commodore is back

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28Aug/10Off

What growth!

Checked out my google analytics dashboard today for the first time in a while. This is what I see:

Now, what I'm not showing here is the actual number of uniques.  And I won't because I want to maintain the illusion that I have a wildly popular site.

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27Aug/10Off

An iPad Guy using ArtStudio

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26Aug/10Off

Some insight into professional design and branding

Creating a loved brand by telling a story: Tether — building43.

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26Aug/10Off

ScribbleSquid and Submission Tracking

ScribbleSquid is great for managing story critiques but there are other things that this powerful tool can help with.  In this article we will be discussing submission tracking. 

It is often the case that short story writers need to submit stories to only one publication at a time.  If it’s rejected, only then can they submit it to another publication.  As mentioned in the previous post, managing one or two of these interactions is not a problem.  But once you start tracking multiple stories at once, things can get a little more complicated. 

With submission tracking in ScribbleSquid, keeping track of which stories have been submitted is really easy.  In your stories dashboard, just start a new submission tracker.  Choose from the existing list of publishers or add a new one. Once you’ve added the tracker you can update the state of that submission over time.  For example, if you get a rejection you can add that to the tracker and paste in the contents of the submission letter. 

Over time you can personally track which publications were the most receptive to your stories.  But ScribbleSquid can go a step further and give you a sense of which publications accepted the most stories across all ScribbleSquid users.  By anonymously collecting information like acceptance rates, publication details and story information, ScribbleSquid can crunch that data and give you some ideas of where it would be best to shop around your stories.

In the end, Submission Tracking is a purely optional feature that can take over some of the tedium involved in professional writing and let you focus more on the creative process.

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