apple / iphone / recommendations — 11 comments
09
Apr 10
Update: After playing around with all my apps a bit more, i can now say the issue with the buggy apps is much much worse than i originally thought. I would now strongly advise against installing this update. If you have updated to 4.0 and want to downgrade, here’s how.
After yesterday’s announcement i logged into my Apple developer account and installed the iphone 4.0 beta firmware. It’s been almost 24 hours, and i can say it’s definitely a mixed bag so far. While there are some awesome features like unified inbox & folders, there are some things you should know if you want to be an early adopter:
Cautions
- Photos app is buggy. I.E opening “Places” crashes the app for me consistently.
- Visual Voicemail doesn’t work anymore (i’m with Rogers in Canada, your mileage may vary)
- I’m seeing new bugs (probably due to the presence of the new APIs) in my existing/previously perfect apps. I.E Tweetie 2 crashes whenever i try to do a Twitter search. It’s pretty rare though. Most if not all apps work perfectly fine after installing.
- If you are going to setup Folders know that if you change anything regarding the apps selected to sync to your iphone within iTunes it will remove all your folders since iTunes knows nothing about Folders.
- Apps seem to stay open until you close them using the new multitasking footer. Double tapping the home button exposes the open apps and tapping/holding allows you to close an app. Discovered this when i started to run into memory issues.
- 4.0 updates the baseband, so you can’t revert back to 3.x (this is 4 life people)
I’ve probably missed a few, but these were the major ones. If you can live with all of this, i’d say go for it and install. If not, wait till the summer.
how to / marketing / word of mouth — No comments
07
Apr 10
My post on Tap Defense strategies generated 40k+ uniques in a year and continues to drive traffic
(I’m going to do a few of these over the next little while, with each one focused on a different part of the online marketing mix)
1. Create Something
Write a blog post. Start a podcast. Develop an eBook. Make something original people can’t get anywhere else. Make sure it’s search engine friendly.
2. Plant the seed
*Carefully* share the link to your content on relevant sites (digg, facebook groups/fan page, other blog comments – do some research to determine what’s appropriate). Do not spam, and never use it as a selling opportunity.
3. Don’t be a quitter
This is a key step. At first almost everything you post will seem to fall flat. Don’t be like every corporate marketing department and give up after 1 week of trying it out.
Rinse & repeat steps 1-3.
If you build it, they will come…eventually
It may take 6 months to a year of regular content marketing before you see results. The bottom line is if you create lots of content, you may not see much traffic from any particular piece of content but collectively the effect is like rain in a bucket (it all adds up), and with some persistence you will see that bucket overflow. The best part? This can all be done for free using free open source tools like WordPress.
cool / fitness / gaming / iphone / recommendations — 2 comments
11
Mar 10
This shit is crack cocaine
So i think the developer of Plants Vs Zombies got access to some super secret API for warping the space time continuum. I use it at the gym to make 30 mins of cardio feel like nothing – it’s awesome! (i wouldn’t recommend playing it while on a treadmill though).
$2.99 on the app store & totally worth every cent. Go git it!
concert reviews / music — 1 comment
09
Mar 10
Best visuals i've seen at a live show in Toronto
Last night i caught Muse at the ACC, the third time i’ve seen them in Toronto. Here’s why i love them so goddamn much:
- They can pull off their live show with 3 guys in the band. Yes, they tour with a 4th member, but i saw them before they were huge at the Kool Haus and had a 4th and it was equally impressive.
- Matt Bellamy’s pipes. The boy can sing live.
- Dominic Howard’s drumming. While it’s not technically too crazy, besides Chad Smith there are no other drummers in rock that get me as excited about what are fairly simple grooves.
- The Visuals. Lighting & risers that lifted them up & down choreographed with the music = very cool.
- They’re British.
GOOD TIMES.
business / marketing — 2 comments
02
Mar 10
Seth Godin live @ Art of Marketing
Today i attended the
Art of Marketing conference in Toronto. The day was comprised of about 5 presentations from the leading minds in marketing today. There were some great nuggets, here are some of my favorites:
Mitch Joel
- Not enough to simply publish to social media, you gotta engage your customers.
- Search Engines control what your “homepage” is, not you.
- 50% less people click on banner ads since 2007
Seth Godin:
- “Anxiety is experiencing failure in advance”
- “Ideas that spread, win”
- No big brand in the past 10 years has built success upon interrupting people with advertising.
- People already have everything they “need”, marketers job is to tell people what they “want”.
- “Art” is the ability to solve interesting problems without instruction. The first person to put a urinal in an art gallery was an artist, the second was a plumber.
- We have to stop listening to the lizard brain. Do something new that makes you uncomfortable. Don’t be afraid, and don’t be a sheep.
apple / cool / iphone — 2 comments
15
Feb 10
It’s my first, and it’s certainly not perfect but as they say “release early / release often”. Since i come from a web development background the Objective C language has a ridiculous learning curve, so a few months ago i learned about http://www.appcelerator.com and am having a blast with this framework. Special thanks to Nolan Wright & Kevin Whinnery from Appcelerator when i got stuck! Lots of cool features, fixes & improvements planned for the next release – stay tuned! [ Download ]
annoying / apple / flash / ipad / iphone — 1 comment
28
Jan 10
Need video? HTML5. Want to make a game for the iphone OS? Learn objective C. I’m not defending Apple (i’m not buying the iPad), but Flash is really on the way out. People who are annoyed at the lack of Flash need to think about what exactly they must have flash for that can’t be done on the iphone OS. Flash intro’s? Band & restaurant websites? Puhhhlease.
Loved this quote i read on Analog Industries:
“No Flash? Who gives a flying fuck? Flash is an improvement over Java only inasmuch as you don’t have to learn a computer language in order to have a gaping wound of a security hole on your system or kill your CPU. HTML5 gives that tragedy the death it so richly deserves anyhow. All the big video sites have HTML5 proof-of-concept players up now; by this time next year, Flash will be a bad memory.”
