I really do need to pay more attention to SEO. Not that I think I have a lot of important or useful things to say, but when I do have something I actually want found (public software projects, for instance) I am often frustrated by how hard it is to locate them.
Not having a Mac capable of doing software development has seriously hindered my ability to attempt to create legitimate iPhone applications. Titanium makes some big claims and I am tempted to give it a go to see what all the fuss is about.
If it delivers on its promise, being able to build an application that can be used on iPhone, iPad and Android would be pretty great, especially for a sans-Mac programmer.
I am a tad skeptical as to whether or not software like this would actually be useful for anything terribly complicated. But in those cases, I imagine it would make more sense to actually work at the native software level anyway.
UPDATE
Unfortunately, after digging for the FAQ I discovered that this still requires having access to the Apple SDK so this does not actually help anyone build an application on Windows or Linux. This is really too bad.
Apple has the clearly superior product and is winning handily in the marketplace. Whatever benefit in the market Apple hopes to achieve by this suit to me seems likely to be worth far less than the loss of good will and prestige Apple will suffer if they vigorously pursue this case (let alone if they initiate more such suits).
Kevin Rose, Digg's founder, spoke this week at Webstock in Wellington, New Zealand and covered 10 amazing tips for entrepreneurs. They were truly insightful - and obviously came straight from the heart and soul of someone who worked a day job and built his dream after hours. This is our take of what he had to say.
1: Just Build It: You don't need anyone's approval and in fact, you probably won't get it, so don't even try.
I am torn on Buzz, but there are plenty of interesting things to learn from it. Umair Haque evaluates Buzz against his five next-generation product & service design principles — the principles of "design for meaning."
Lifehacker has a guide for hiding/removing Google Buzz from our Inbox. A better solution for me was to filter Google Buzz conversations to its own label instead of simply archiving it. This way the comments still stand out from the rest of the Buzz.
They mention this as being optional, but it is really easy to miss!
One of the things I like about services like Dropbox is its ability to transparently keep track of multiple versions of a file. With S3 supporting versioning natively, it seems like S3 buckets could pretty easily become an effective version aware backup solution.
It has been interesting seeing how these third party apps for Twitter have been evolving. With the exception of maybe IM clients, I have rarely moved from app to app so frequently. I realize that part of that has been because I have had to find apps for web, desktop, iPhone and now Android, but still. The turnover and lack of loyalty between updates has been a new experience for me.
I have recently switched to TweetDeck for my primary desktop client as Seesmic Desktop does not support list refresh. However, there seems to be little competition in the Twitter client category on Android. Seesmic, as far as I can tell, is the way to go. And with this update, it becomes far more useful, especially to anyone who manages multiple accounts.
Here are the main features in this update:
Adding an Extra Large text size option
Your profile information (avatar, number of following and followers,...) will now be updated automatically
Changing your Twitter account password will now be handled by the application
Composer now auto-corrects and auto-capitalize your words and sentences
Notifications are now cleared when the application is accessed from Launcher
Easily changing default account from the application's Settings
Can remove a Twitter account simply by pressing on it