Captcha is that technology used when you are logging in to a website that requires you to type in obscured letters or words to make sure you aren’t a computer robot trying to break in. I came across a different take on this technology which I think is awesome. You just have to assemble a very easy puzzle. Here is a screenshot:
Scott encourages folks to start their own blog, especially developers:
“You are not blogging enough. You are pouring your words into increasingly closed and often walled gardens. You are giving control – and sometimes ownership – of your content to social media companies that will SURELY fail. These companies are profoundly overvalued, don’t care about permalinks, don’t make your content portable, and have terms of service that are so complex and obtuse that there are entire websites dedicate to explaining them.”
It’s true that the world today is about social networks such as Twitter (ugh) and Facebook so to reach more folks, I simply post to my blog and then link to it on my Facebook wall. Best of both worlds!
I’ve been working at home with my new company DigitalHarmonyGames. I picked up a 2nd 23in monitor adding to my work Macbook Pro 17in I now have a triple monitor setup. I have Unity3d running on one external, MonoDevelop on the other external and I do mail, skype and web surfing on the Laptop screen. The 2nd external monitor was made possible by the $50 Cirago USB Display Adapter. The USB adapter works great. As long as I don’t run full-screen video or run anything that is too demanding on the usb connected monitor the setup works perfectly.
My browser of choice is Google Chrome. I like the bookmark syncing so no matter where I use it my bookmarks are there. I like the support for multiple users which allows me to login to different Google Accounts.
Tips:
Use the built in PDF reader. You can make sure it is enabled by typing chrome://plugins in the addressbar
I like what Nick has to say about the complaints of having to support multiple devices/OSs/screen sizes on Android.
…Just like developing for iOS had an initial adjustment period, it takes time to learn the Android way of doing things. Developers and designers who are unwilling to invest that time just end up creating crappy clones of their iPhone apps.
To those folks, I can only say: remember when you bristled at seeing second-rate Mac ports of popular Windows apps? Remember how you felt about companies that treated your choice of OS as an also-ran?
Sure if I had a choice I’d prefer not to have to worry about different configurations, but that is the appeal of Android. Just like Windows gave users more choices compared to Mac, so does Android compared to IOS.
CodeAcademy has a nice step by step web based tutorial on JavaScript.
The Qliq Android application uses an architecture described in this Google presentation.
A ContentProvider gives access to data retrieved via REST services and cached in a SQLite database. It is a pretty elegant solution though at times it seems to suffer some performance issues in terms of timely screen updates.
There is a lot to learn about Android. There is more than one way to solve a problem and the Android SDK provides many patterns and components to get the job done. The best way to learn is to see how others have solved problems and to simply dive in and try things out.
I recently came across ORMLite as an alternative to SQLite. Don’t know much about it. I wonder how much use it has on the Android platform.
Best show on TV that got cancelled. Watch the entire first season on Netflix!
I read an interesting article in the NY Times Magazine. It was about how companies try to glean shopping patterns from their customers.
This articles talks about the related privacy issues
The full article is here
