iOS Apps integration

Everybody in the iOS world knows what the following line of code does.

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:url];

What’s a real pity is that big applications don’t use that as they should. I find myself many times having to quote an iOS application dedicating 30% or even more time to integrate with Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare. That’s crazy… APIs are not the solution, at least not web apis.

The real solution is callback methods.

I’d love to be able to put on that url something like

tweet://text=Hey, I like this blog!&fixedText=NO&callback=myApp://tweetedText={1}
facebook://like=This blog&commentAllowed=NO&callback=myApp://facebookLiked

Why can’t twitter or facebook provide with a real API that calls their app just to a job and come back? With multitasking on iOS it should be pretty easy to do.

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Mandar una aplicación para aprobación al AppStore en una hora, de la nada.

Guau, es más fácil ser breve en inglés.

Hola gente.

He estado desarrollando aplicaciones iOS por casi dos años. Algunas fueron aprobadas y algunas rechazadas. Crucé la línea e hice equilibro sobre ella en varias oportunidades. Ahora mismo tengo una aplicación In Review hace 5 semanas, eso significa que está aprobada a nivel técnico pero que nadie se anima a aprobarla o desaprobar su entrada definitiva al AppStore.

Estoy pensando en dar una charla corta, con ejemplos reales, de una aplicación real y enviarla para aprobación al AppStore desde cero en una hora. Pero necesito saber que voy a tener un público que merezca el esfuerzo*.

Quienes estén interesados pueden dejarme un comentario o mandarme un mensaje por twitter @iMariano.

IMPORTANTE: Este evento no será esponsoreado de ninguna manera. No intentamos reclutar gente a cambio de sortear una netbook.

* Me refiero a que haya al menos unas 5 personas que realmente quieran aprender y compartir sus experiencias al respecto.

Submitting to the AppStore from scratch in an hour

Hello people.

I’ve developed iOSs apps for almost two years. Had a few apps approved on the AppStore and a few rejected. I crossed the line and balanced over it a bunch of times. Right now one of my apps has been 5 weeks in review, meaning that it’s technically approved, but no one dares to either approve it or reject it.

I’m thinking on giving a quick chat, with real examples, real app building and submitting from scratch within an hour. But I need to know I’d have a worthy public*.

If you’d like to attend leave a comment or contact me on twitter @iMariano.

IMPORTANT: This event will not be sponsored in any way. We are not looking to recruit people in exchange for a netbook lotto.

*By worthy I mean more than 5, actually willing to learn and share their experiences.

Microtransactions or Web 3.0

If I’d have a million dollars I’d spend them all on developing micro-transactions on the web.

Google and Apple demonstrated that the next business is the small money business. Google with Google Ads and Apple with iTunes and the AppStore. Instead of 20.000$ a day hallmarks, 2¢ a click, and instead of 20$ a CD, a song at 99¢.

The web 2.0 dragged popularity from newspapers into people, with the blogs and the user’s easy content generation. But they still own and pay for advertisements (Web2.0’s fuel). They have concentrated the kind of power that’s very difficult to break for the small timers.

But what if you could just donate 1¢ to fixing that road you use everyday, clear a park or just putting people out the streets? How about just to support a blogger, a singer or a developer? What if people wouldn’t have to think so hard before opening their wallets?

People, masses, would gain a power they don’t have today.

Democracy it’s about representing the people for two reasons:

1. Representatives knows better (yeah… sure)
2. We can’t fit every citizen on the congress and have them debating.

We can’t fit them, that’s still right, but we can make people invest and participate little, not just complain about things. Today, sadly, it’s big or nothing and that leaves a lot, really a lot of small out of the equation.

Since I don’t have a millon dollars, I’ll have to anxiously wait for that day.

fbconnect iphone build errors

Hi, so you got any of these?

• 101 errors
• FBConnect/FBConnectGlobal.h: File or directory not found
• Works for distribution but not for iPhone simulator
• Checked EVERYTHING else there is to check

Make sure your “Configuration” dropdown is set to “All configurations” and not only “Distribution” on the project’s info build tab.

Hope it helps!

5 phases to become a happy programmer

1. Avoid going to an office for a living. (Work from home)
2. Avoid working for intermediates. (Get paid by the customer itself)
3. Write software that gives you money. (Sell it yourself or make money via adds or sell it on the AppStore)
4. Make money out of software written by others. (If your ideas are really good don’t waste time programming them, at least not all of them)
5. With the money you made get yourself a minimart or a newspaper kiosk and never touch a computer again.

If you really are into software and want to make people’s life easier via good software you can skip phase 5.

Planning to get rid of my PC

I’ve been wanting to do this ever since I bought my first Macbook.

My desktop now has a Macbook 13″ and a beautiful 22″ Viewsonic monitor powered by and awful space/electricity/Qi consuming PC. So my objective was to get rid of the PC but keep the monitor and the Macbook, and of course get a keyboard (other than the Macbook’s) to use everyday.

To do so I needed to be able to work on Mac first so I:

• Downloaded Mono, since my primary work occurs on .net, but the IDE was simply awful, buggy, slow and didn’t run ASP.net.
• Tried installing virtual machines (both Parallels Desktop and VMWare*), but 80 Gbs of HD and 2Gbs of RAM are just not enough for that (multiple clients => multiple environments => multiple 10Gbs VMs).
• Started working on iPhone projects.
• Even tried to leave ASP.net for Python! Throw 10 years of work on MS environments just to get rid of the PC… Woah!
• Thought of buying a MacbookPro, but they are too damn big!
• Thought of buying a new Macbook 13″ Core 2 Duo @ 2.4Ghz, 4Gbs of RAM, 250 Gbs of HD, but they are too damn expensive!

I have a buyer for the PC so my plan now is:

1. Sell the PC (Core 2 Duo @ 1.67Ghz, 2Gbs RAM, 250 HD). + 250 USD
2. Buy two Kingston’s 2Gbs DDR2 SDRAM @ 667Mhz. -67.80 USD
3. Buy a Seagate 250 Gbs HD @5400 rpm. -129.72 USD
4. Buy a Apple Wireless keyboard. -79.00 USD

Total budget: 26.52 USD

So I’d be changing two computers for one with VM and Portability capabilities… I guess that’d be a smart move. I just hope my Macbook doesn’t break or get steal. This move will leave me with no backup machine.

* By the way, I kept VMWare since it was the only VM that will port from Mac to PC with no problem. Parallels doesn’t exists on PC, MS Virtual PC doesn’t exists on Mac.

Twitter complement

Sometimes, when writting my status on twitter I feel like I have too little space to do so.

So, what I’ll do is use this as a complement for twitter, expect more frecuent posts!

Doubts on why we are really using Services

This came up while trying to write a really good architecture, one that doesn’t require the programmer to write almost a thing to access its data.

I’ve seen a lot of systems architecture and the all have these things in common:

• They have a Service a Model and a DataAccess projects
• Most of this projects files are likely to be added to a Generic file, as they do pretty much the same
• They hold the application’s logic
• They authenticate the user, return and save data, managing transactions
• Nowadays, most of them use a Object Relation Mapper software.

Don’t we already have something that does all that? Right! The database… They are even capable of publishing there stored procedures as WebServices.

All this, for sor long just to avoid maintaining Stored Procedures, Views and Rules? Is it that hard to do it that way? If so, shouldn’t we start thinking of a High level language instead of a whole set of projects?

 

Well, yes. LINQ. But again, why use LINQ if it’s almost a DB Query? Can’t we just start using the Database for what it was created?

How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you

http://www.catswhothrowupgrass.com/kill.php

 

Very, very funny. Be careful if these signs are observed.