Phew! - Parent-approved safe YouTube and web for kidsA little birdie told me that you (all seven of you) have been waiting anxiously for my thoughts on the iPad – the definitive iPad perspective. 🙂 Here you go. First, I don’t have one myself yet, but I have had a chance to play on friends’ iPads. Second, while I don’t consider myself an…
software development
Java culture rant
As some of you may know, over the last year or so I’ve been spending more time with larger and larger Java-based server-side projects (including Quick Bit Notes, Twitmart, Litetext, and iSpykee). In this process, I’ve had to “catch up” to the Java state-of-the-art and get reacquainted with the Java culture. Much of this has…
Litetext for rendering text into a bitmap on Google App Engine Java
While developing Quick Bit Notes, I realized that the Google App Engine “sandbox” for Java doesn’t support AWT or other graphics Java classes, so I put together a simple “old-school” text rendering class that’s compatible with App Engine, called litetext. This small package (less than 1000 lines of Java code) was developed to provide a…
Introducing Quick Bit Notes
I’ve released Quick Bit Notes (QBN) as an experiment in an unconventional method of person-to-person asynchronous communication. One person drops off a personal note for another person. That note is stored and presented in image form to the recipient. The actual text is never stored on QBN and never transferred over the wire when the…
Experimenting with Google AppEngine for Java
A while back, I noted that Google had announced that they would be supporting Java on their AppEngine cloud computing platform. I finally got around to working on a significant AppEngine for Java project (something beyond “hello world” or the demo “Guestbook” app). Working with my friend and colleague, and serious Java guru, Mark Petrovic…
Google App Engine adds Cron and Java
Google today announced that they will be supporting Java on their GAE cloud computing platform. I signed up for the beta, but don’t know when/if I’ll be approved. I also saw that the platform also now includes a cron mechanism to run scheduled “jobs”, see: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/config/cron.html This could change things. It will be interesting to…
iSpykee – Open-source Spykee for iPhone
I finally finished making my previously mentioned iPhone hack for Spykee into a form I could release for public consumption. It’s still not perfect, but at least I’ve removed external dependencies so it can be installed without too much difficulty. Basically you run the “controller” software on your LAN (the same LAN as the Spykee…
Google App Engine teases, but ultimately doesn’t deliver
This blog should perhaps have been named “My Rants” – but I guess that could be said of most blogs. In case it’s not obvious yet, this is officially a rant. But I will try to keep it short, an “Executive Summary” rant, if you will. In fact, that’s all I have energy for anyway.…
Taglets.org API examples and sample code
Taglets.org is founded on the idea that no matter how brilliant you and your coworkers are (or think you are), there are always going to be smarter people outside of your company. That’s why it’s an API and platform first, so that people smarter than we are can exploit the platform in ways we would…
Spykee iPhone Hack
At left you’ll see my first cut at a rudimentary Spykee mini-console for iPhone. If you’re familiar with the standard PC or Mac Spykee console app, you’ll recognize many of the functions. This app only implements a sub-set of the full PC and Mac consoles. I basically wanted to get some minimal functionality working before…
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