Cross Dominant

Facebook is removing App Profile Pages - This affects a lot of Devs

#“Facebook is removing App Profile Pages - This affects a lot of Devs”

Today, we are announcing that we will remove all App Profile Pages on February 1st, 2012. Though similar in appearance, the automatically generated App Profile Pages differ in features from traditional Facebook Pages, and over time the inconsistencies between the two, such as different Insights, APIs, and distribution channels, have become more apparent.

via developers.facebook.com

If you have an App that you add to Pages as a Tab by sending Page Owners to the App's own Profile Page, then you need to change how you do things.

The easiest way is the URL example they give. You can set that up and just tell people to go there and click on the Page which needs the Tab.

Probably a bigger documentation issue for companies like ours rather than being a technical issue.

Ireland Finally Gets Its Own Oyster Card - LeapCard

#“Ireland Finally Gets Its Own Oyster Card - LeapCard”

via leapcard.ie

I could be crabby and point out we should have had this for a decade, considering it’s all CIE. But at least we have it now. Yay! Buying one now.

Microsoft really taking Node.js seriously

#“Microsoft really taking Node.js seriously”

We’re now on the Microsoft BizSpark program and one thing I want to try out over the next few weeks is getting our Node.js+MongoDB back-end running on Azure.

I spotted this yesterday on the Node mailing list and it shows how Microsoft now lists Node after .Net but before Java and PHP! It’s now “Tier 1” inside MSFT which is fantastic news.

There is also a very very cool video by Steve Marx introducing Node on Azure, if you want to see how it all works. I was stunned how easy it was. And both npm and Express work fine!

Anyone know what the story is with WebSockets tho? That was a limitation in first release of Cloud Foundry but I don’t know if it still is or if it is on Azure.

Very interesting to see Steve using Sublime Text as his editor. I bought v2 of this recently and absolutely love it. Seen by many as a Textmate for Windows.

Running Your Own Private Copy of AppInventor for Your School

#“Running Your Own Private Copy of AppInventor for Your School”

I had been getting quite concerned recently about the switchover of AppInventor from Google to MIT. For some reason Google is sticking hard to the Dec 31st shutdown date whilst MIT won't be ready to publicly host until "some time in Q1". This would leave 60 kids I'm teaching in my kids' school in the lurch for potentially a few months.

I'm on the main Group mailing list but saw nothing recently as we raced towards the deadline. But a bit of poking around in the other Groups this morning and I found a link to the test code from MIT. So this is a package for running the main AppInventor JAR on Google AppEngine. Lots of warnings about instability and frequent changes but I'm delighted they have done this.

I'm off to install it now. Here's hoping Google doesn't charge for Educational projects on AppEngine! Damn, yes they do. And the MIT teamdoesn'tknow yet what level of activity/users will kick you out of the Free Tier.

I'm neither a Java nor an AppEngine person, but I've managed to get simple Python code running there before so it should be too hard to get running.

OK, I just started reading the doc. We need a separate Linux Build server to generate the APKs etc. This shouldn't be a problem, we can sign up for a Free EC2 instance to do that. In fact, not to be ungrateful, but it'd probably be easier for most people if the whole thing ran on EC2.

Hmm, ok, I'll finish this later and write a new post on any gotchas. Suffice to say, if you ain'tcomfortablewith SDKs and building software, don't even think about it!

Yeah, so I got an iPad. Let the Flaming Commence :-)

#“Yeah, so I got an iPad. Let the Flaming Commence :-)”

It’s for work, alright? Seriously tho.

First impressions:

Great for doing demos. Spent all morning doing so.
Very good browser
Love that smart cover thingy.
The Next buttons during initial setup are too small
Nice to see you don’t need a bloody computer any more to set it up
No idea what any of the icons in the email client do. Is one of them Delete or is that Archive? Where’s the Help button? Acutally repeat that question for every App
Email client itself is desperately clunky. Installing GMail now.
The all-caps keyboard is so ridiculous I snort every time I use it
The App Store exiting every time I install an App is infuriating
With volume at zero it still makes noises for some notifications
It can only install one App at a time - ever hear of multi-tasking?
All of the Twitter clients are utter garbage. Not one of them uses all the screen real-esate in any beneficial way. This is actually shocking. And Tweetdeck for iPad is gone. Big opportunity still there.
No idea if iCloud is actually working. I assume so. The lack of a notification bar like Android is quite frustrating.
Accesses the mobile hotspot on my Android phone perfectly
Its auto-correct is even worse than Android. And the cancel pop-up is so tiny I have to tap it 4 or 5 times.
Speaking of which, I find the touch screen very unresponsive for things like the clear-button in the search box.
Do any Apps use the lock-screen for things like weather? Or can they?
VPN setup looks easy enough. Will do that later.
But yeah, it’s the perfect TV Second Screen. No doubt about it :-)

Go on then, hit me with your favourite Apps. I've grabbed some of the interesting Top Selling free ones already. Thrilled to see Dropbox there. I also bought Instapaper and Keynote.

Looking forward to the Asus Transformer Prime in the new year ;-)

Wonderful Idea - Free Sugru for awesome education projects

#“Wonderful Idea - Free Sugru for awesome education projects”

via youtube.com

Those brilliant Sugru people have gone and done it again. In their own words:

"We know that sugru is a great material for prototyping ideas and testing stuff out so we thought we would set up sugru PROJECTS, its a simple idea where we give second level schools, colleges and universities (anywhere in the world) free sugru to run great projects."

Full details over on http://sugru.com/blog/sugru-projects-free-sugru-for-awesome-education-projects/

Simple Fix for Major Asus N53SN Laptop Sleep Recovery Problem

#“Simple Fix for Major Asus N53SN Laptop Sleep Recovery Problem”

The Asus N53SN is proving to be a great purchase. Wodges of CPU power and yet it strangely lasts a decent amount of time on battery. Unlike certain other makes, you can pop the battery out and bring a spare so it's no problem doing lots of hard-core work on the Cork-Dublin train run.

However it has had one infuriating problem since I bought it. When you wake it up after a sleep (e.g. if you close the lid) it behaves fine for 5 mins and then freezes solid. The mouse pointer still moves but nothing else works. A hard reboot is required. I updated all the drivers and even did a full Windows re-install but to no avail. I was convinced it was a video driver issue due to the mouse thing but could not get to the bottom of it. I then started to suspect it was a hardware problem.

For giggles the other day, I went googling for the problem again and ended up on the same massive owners thread as before over on notebookreview.com. But this time someone else was reporting the issue and someone had a suggestion. It was to update the Intel RST Storage Drivers. It seemed an unlikely fix and there were no updated drivers on the Asus site. But there were on the Intel site. And blummin eck, it flippin worked! The laptop has been perfect ever since. So if you have the same problem, I hope you find this post! Oh and don't bother with that stupid Intel hardware auto-detection Java tool garbage. It didn't do a thing for me.

Agloves Touchscreen Gloves - Very Nice.

#“Agloves Touchscreen Gloves - Very Nice.”

The Agloves people in the US mailed me recently wondering if I'd review their touchscreen gloves. I didn't even have to see them to know that they had come up with a brilliant idea. They popped a free pair in the post to me and I got them earlier in the week. This won't be a long review for the simple reason that they just work, brilliantly.

I always remember Nokia die-hards a few years back desperately trying to convince the world that the N97 wasn't a piece of rubbish that signalled the impending doom of Nokia. One of the arguments they used was that crappy resistive screens are better thancapacitiveones because you can use them with your gloves on. Well Agloves puts the final nail in that coffin.

The gloves themselves are 30% silver yarn, 75% acrylic and 5% spandex. They are a lovely snug stretchy fit and are not too thick. They are also very soft so you don't need to worry about scratches etc.

Whilst they are not quite as responsive as the tip of your finger, they are surprisingly good. I couldn't find anything that didn't work on my HTC Sensation whilst wearing them.

I actually just did a test on them when wet. I don't know how, but they work just as well. Normally when my hands are wet, it's impossible to use a touch screen.

If you wear gloves and have a touchscreen phone, then they really are a no-brainer. And they have just launched their Irish site at agloves.ie

Ubuntu Announces the Unity Mouse

#“Ubuntu Announces the Unity Mouse”

The perfect partner for the Unity GUI.

The future is here, today.

So long Google Health. Hello Microsoft HealthVault.

#“So long Google Health. Hello Microsoft HealthVault.”

I got the dire email from Google earlier in the week reminding me to download all of my Google Health data before the end of the year. I did so today whilst feeling terribly depressed about the missed opportunity. It's one of the first times I've ever fully deleted any online account for anything.

But it was interesting to see Google offer export toMicrosoft HealthVault as an option. A few clicks later and all my data moved datacentres somewhere.

Hopefully MSFT will play the long game with HealthVault. Have they any plans for Windows Phone 7 Apps to integrate in HealthVault? If WP7 is to have a chance of competing, it needsdifferentiation. Building something that kicks RunKeeper's ass and has a strong health angle could be one way to do that. (Yet another area where Nokia was ahead of everyone and pissed it all away).

Mixed laterality since 1968

12 Dec 2011, 14:59

12 Dec 2011, 13:03

11 Dec 2011, 12:09

11 Dec 2011, 11:42

08 Dec 2011, 18:07

04 Dec 2011, 20:05

04 Dec 2011, 17:53

26 Nov 2011, 12:57

25 Nov 2011, 11:24

24 Nov 2011, 12:56