Prankster Android

My second app, Prankster, is now available on the Android Market. Prankster is an electronic noise machine. This app started out life on the iPhone, the new features I have planned will only be on the Android version.

Available at (link only good on an Android phone): Market Place
On other devices: AppBrain

Hello Android

My first Android app, Hello, is now for sale on the Android Market. Hello is an electronic name badge. This app started out life on the iPhone, the Android version is much better and was more fun to write. I am really digging the Android development API.

Available at (link only good on an Android phone): Market Place
On other devices: AppBrain

The Website Move

I am attempting to move my website IncisiveGeek to this blog, in the process I will be pruning some of my old content and cleaning up. If you see a flurry of new posts with old dates don't be alarmed.

The purpose of this exercise is to not pay $15 a month for web hosting and instead use free services. I have been paying for web hosting since the summer of 1999 and would like to stop.

Once I have it all ironed out I will post all the pieces I am using for the site.

UPDATE 04/07/2010: The switch has been thrown and I am now hosting free!

Personal Computer Liberation

I now have a technology goal for the year, to move my personal computing needs to platforms/programs that are easy to import/export my data from. For the most part this will be open source products but I will not ignore closed source products that provide me with easy non locked access to my data.

The catalyst for this change happened on Feb 5th of this year. My iMac at home stopped working, I feared the thing was dead (it is just a little over 4 years old now). I opened the thing up and found that the hard drive had failed, luckily I have good backups and it only cost me the price of a new drive and my time.

I got lucky this time but it got me thinking, what if the computer did die on me, what then? Buying a Mac just so I could access all MY data and programs seems wrong (will cover what programs I "need" below), a quick check at the Apple Store shows that the cheapest replacement I can get is a Mac Mini for $599 and if I wanted a comprable machine $1,199 for the iMac. I don't want to pay that much for a computer anymore, and I don't want to be locked into a single ecosystem.

To sum up, my goals are the following:

• Use a system that can be installed on any commodity hardware.
• Use software that I can get my info into and out of easily and not be locked in, ideally open source but I will not exclude "non evil" closed source apps/services.
• Eliminate hardware/software lock-in.

So far I have taken the following steps:

• Use Google calendars to sync with my Mac/iPhone instead of MobileMe.
• Use Google contacts to sync with my Mac/iPhone instead of MobileMe.
• Use Toodledoo in place of OmniFocus for task tracking on Mac/iPhone.
• Use Dropbox in place of MobileMe iDisk for multi computer/phone file sharing, as a bonus it is much faster and free.
• Moved to Google Chrome as my main browser to stay consistant across platforms, was using Safari on Mac and FireFox on other platforms.

What I plan on doing:

• Move to the Nexus One once it comes to Verizon or At&t, that way I get rid of the iPhone app restrictions.
• Move to Ubuntu as my main operating system. Initially I will try it on the iMac if I can and if not buy a new machine for it. This is the part where I run into the major snags.
• If I can move pieces to a web based solution I will make that attempt to ease any future transitions.
• Since TextMate is Mac only I will need to brush up on my emacs skills for all my coding needs.

Snags:

• My wife loves her iPhone, so I can not completely get rid of the Mac right now. I could install a dedicated Windows partition just to sync with iTunes, but that just feels dirty.
• We have an AppleTV which we rip all the kids movies to (that way they don't handle the disks and scratch them all up). I really like the AppleTV, we will need a way to sync media to it, a Mac/Windows partition or some yet unknown way to do it in Linux.
• A few years ago we started using Aperture to store all our digital photos, I really like how it stores 'recipes' for changes and does not duplicate files. I need to find a similar program for Linux, so far I have had no luck.
• I have developed 5 apps for the iPhone that are on the App Store, I am not doing much with them because I am disgusted with the whole experience/platform. Do I get an iPod touch for continued development or do I abandon the platform and only do Android apps?

So my biggest problems are: pictures, music and videos. I'll update with any progress throughout the year.

Apple’s Ideal Netbook

Imagine if Apple made a netbook sized enclosure that you slide your iPhone/iPod Touch into and it turns the device into a netbook. The enclosure could house; a screen, keyboard, trackpad (use the iPhone/iPod Touch screen), extended battery, speakers, SD card slot, usb port(s) all connected to the devices dock connector. The beauty of this is that the iPhone/iPod Touch already contains the most expensive bits.

Will Apple do something like this? I don’t know. But if any one company could pull it off it would be Apple, they do control the stack top to bottom.

Pros:

• Fast boot 
• Apple controls hardware and software, so doable 
• Mature App Store could be expanded for “netbook” apps. Ex. A full version of Safari, TextEdit, Preview, Terminal etc 
• Built in cell data service and/or WiFi 

Cons:

• Hard to answer your phone when docked in netbook, Bluetooth headset could remedy 
• Apple would probably charge too much, and require a new version with each iPhone/iPod Touch change 
• Cell partners may not like the surge in data usage  
• The extended battery may need to be quite big enough to power the larger screen