On the Usability of Codecademy
On the Usability of Codecademy: Usability is hard because real users use our UIs and software in different and unexpected ways. (Via Zen and the Art of Ruby Programming) Required reading for people who...
Category: Development
App Cubby Blog – Free and Low-Cost Apps
App Cubby Blog – Free and Low-Cost Apps: “The pool of time users spend on smartphones is staggering and growing rapidly, but it is not infinite. The more time people spend with useful/entertaining free...
Immobile Apps
Immobile Apps: One of the most painful things we did when developing Glassboard was ban ourselves from Wi-Fi for a week. I live in an area where cell coverage is really spotty, and using...
Kindle Fire Does Not Fire the Imagination
Kindle Fire Does Not Fire the Imagination: The Kindle software itself is a lousy reading experience; the justified, un-hyphenated typography is an eyesore, the font selection is depressingly homely, and the line-spacing is visually...
“An Introduction to MapReduce” by Pete Warden; O’Reilly Media
Founder of OpenHeatMap Pete Warden provides a simple introduction to MapReduce, the Google-created framework for examining large datasets. This video tutorial includes four videos: an intro to the topic, writing your first MapReduce job,...
Using OmniAuth 0.3.0.rc1 with Rails 3.1
I’m posting this so others can avoid the frustration I felt yesterday trying to use OmniAuth in a Rails 3.1 application. After adding this to my Gemfile: gem “omniauth”, :git => “git://github.com/intridea/omniauth.git” and running:...
Mac OS X Programming Editor Roundup
When I got my first Mac in 2004, I found few programming editors. Since then, however, Mac OS X has birthed many programming editors that match or beat options on other computing platforms. I’ve...
Hands On with HP TouchPad
Last Friday, I saw where you could get $200 off an HP TouchPad, so I decided to jump. I went to the Staples in St. Johns Town Center with my FatWallet coupon and the...
Peach or Pumpkin?
Rather than catching up on sleep after we finished writing the first edition of Pro Core Data for iOS, Michael Privat and I have been working both on the second edition of that book...
Ghostwriter Notes for iPad is New and Noteworthy
As I type this, Ghostwriter Notes, the notepad app for iPad written by my friend and coauthor Michael Privat, is listed in the New and Noteworthy section of the iPad App Store. With each...