I don’t watch too much television but I recently started watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I’ve always been a fan of the Terminator franchise and this tv series fits really nicely into the movies. Highly recommend watching this show if you even remotely like Terminator and especially if you like robots. The Sarah Connor Chronicles is available on Netflix Instant Watch.

If you are an iOS developer you should definitely give these apps a spin. They’ve definitely helped me become more efficient in my work.

Snippets

Snippets is a powerful application for Mac OS X that stores the most valuable pieces of code you can reuse in different projects many times.

The main idea is to make the process of reusing as easy as possible to avoid wasting your valuable time to write the same code again.

Snippets is great at sorting and organizing code snippets. I no longer have to remember how to do certain programmy things when I know I can quickly and easily refer to a snippet I’ve saved.

Ingredients

Ingredients is a free browser for Apple’s documentation

Ingredients adds a nice way to browse and search the SDK documentation. Highly recommend it if you find yourself jumping to Apple’s documentation often.

As far back as I can remember owning a cell phone (since the cingular days), I’ve always had AT&T as my cellular provider. No problems whatsoever. I’ve always had great reception, hardly any dropped calls, and life was awesome.

Recently, however, my fiancée and I have moved into a new apartment in Brooklyn, NY where our reception is TERRIBLE. You would think being in a major metropolitan area, cellular reception would be ubiquitous. Think again.

Compound the lack of cellular reception with the need for me to run my business out of my home office and you can see how someone like me would be a bit upset. I’ve thought about dropping a land-line in my apartment but unfortunately that’s another expense my tiny little bootstrapped startup can’t afford.

I’ve called AT&T customer service a few times and here is a summary of their reponses:

Call #1 resolution:

We’re upgrading a tower close to you in 3 days. Wait three days and see if that makes it better.

Call #2 resolution (after resolution 1 failed):

We know you’re having cell reception issues. That’s because a bunch of towers in your area are down and we have no idea when they will be repaired or if that will even help.

I even got an email from a customer service rep that recommended this:

If indoors and there are no signal bars are displayed, attempt to step outside and see if the signal improves. If so, then indoor coverage is not available at the current location. Move to open areas that are less likely to block the signal to increase the phone’s signal strength. Confined areas such as tunnels, mirrored buildings, and elevators are known for blocking wireless signals.

Awesome. I guess that means every time I need to place or receive a business call and I need to quickly run down three flights of stairs and across the street to get some reception. Unacceptable.

As an iPhone developer, it is somewhat expected that I use an iPhone on a regular basis. While I love my iPhone 4, cell reception issues in my apartment have resulted in way too many dropped calls with clients and colleagues.

So interwebs, what should I do?

UPDATE (after posting this article I went back and forth a few times with @ATTJenn):

ATTJenn: I can take a closer look at this if you can please DM your cell number and zip code. Thanks.

Me: <number and zip sent>

ATTJenn: Thanks. There are known issues in your area that we are working to resolve. I apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

Me: Can you tell me when you expect these issues to be resolved?

ATTJenn: Here is some additional information on how we are working to improve that area: http://bit.ly/c74JGoabout

Me: That article is from a month ago which says the upgrades are completed. I don’t have issues anywhere except my office.

ATTJenn: If the issue is isolated to one building, then it would not be related to the known issues in the area. I can understand that you are upset about how your service works when you are inside your office, and I am sorry for your frustration. A lot depends on the material used in the building’s construction. The signal for cell phones is in essence a radio signal and can be affected by the same structures that would block a radio station signal, for example. Depending upon where the tower is located and the angle of the antenna, you may find better coverage in one building over another.

Me: So what solution do you have for me other than moving to another building or canceling my service?

ATTJenn: At this point the best way to improve signal in a building is with MicroCell. You can check availability at http://bit.ly/njH2

(I checked the availability and the site was down. Lame.)

ATTJenn: You may want to also try manually switching to Edge just when in your office. This may help while in the building.

Me: Edge doesn’t help and there’s absolutely no way I am buying a microcell to fix your network. I don’t live in the middle of nowhere

Death star image from http://www.applegazette.com/

While watching Season 3 of Mad Men (for the second time) in preparation for Season 4, Don Draper hit me with this very appropriate business lesson ….

“Connie, there are snakes that go months without eating. And then they finally catch something, but they’re so hungry that they suffocate while they’re eating. One opportunity at a time.”

Fellow freelancers and indie developers, choose the projects you take on wisely.

Ever since I bought my iPad and signed up for Verzion Fios internet my iPad’s wifi connection has been dropping on every use. If you have the ActionTec WiFi router which Verizon typically provides you with, you may find my instructions below helpful:

1. Go to http://192.168.1.1
2. Username should be ‘admin’ and password should be ‘password1″ (don’t worry about the extra characters the text box automatically adds. It’s an encryption feature.)

3. Click on ‘Wireless Settings’ on the top navigation menu

4. Click ‘Basic Security Settings’ from the left navigation menu

5. Switch the Channel to 6 (or one of the standard Channels 1 or 11)

6. Click Apply at the bottom of the page

7. Click ‘Advanced Security Settings’ from the left navigation menu

8. Select WPA2 security (the default is WEP , which is weaker)

9. Set up your pre-shared key on the screen presented (this is your network password)

10. Click apply

No more dropped connections after following these steps!

The focus on Apple’s faulty iPhone 4 antenna seems to have robbed the spotlight from the iPhone 4 release and knowing Apple quite well, this is killing them.

With the latest blow being Consumer Report’s announcement that they can not recommend the iPhone 4 , Apple will really need to step up to the plate and show their customers some respect. The countless youtube videos reproducing the issues are not the kind of word of mouth Apple wants to spread.

Hoping to possibly avoid an iPhone 4 recall, Apple has decided to mask and cover-up the story with a simple software fix.While reprogramming the algorithm that is used to display bars on the iPhone 4 status bar will definitely fix the cosmetic issue , that’s like buying a ferrari and realizing it only goes 40 mph and then having a Ferrari mechanic tell you they’ll recalibrate the speedometer so it automatically adds 100mph to your speed. Bogus!

Apple can totally delete complaints from their forums all they want, but people will continue to voice their opinions. Sticks and stones rarely have an impact on Apple, but apparently these customer words do.

Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone 4 is an amazing device. It’s fast, it’s sleek, and the screen is gorgeous. Apps that have been update to take advantage of the Retinal Display look super crisp. Unfortunately, all of these technical achievements will remain in the shadows if Apple doesn’t fix the issue quickly and appropriately.

According to the iPhone app “Are you left-brained or right-brained?” ….

LINEAR. SEQUENTIAL. SYMBOLIC. LOGICAL. VERBAL. REALITY BASED. If you have a Left Hemisphere Dominance, you process information in a linear and logical manner, from part to whole. You are probably a list-maker: you enjoy making master schedules and a daily planning, and take pleasure in checking the tasks off when they are accomplished. Likewise, learning things in sequence is relatively easy for you: you have no trouble following a conversation, you are good at following directions and pay special attention to details. You are comfortable too with symbols, which involve linguistic and mathematical endeavors: you have no trouble expressing yourself in words, you are a good speller and you feel comfortable with assignments involving reasoning and analyzing. You adjust well to changes in your environment, adapt well to rules and have no trouble following them: In fact, if there are no rules, you will probably make them up to follow!

Interesting!

However I took a similar test and it showed I was 50% left-brained and 50% right-brained …. more like 100% left brained and 100% right-brained! pffff

I’m really happy to announce that I’ve recently organized the official Brooklyn iPhone and iPad Developer Meetup. For more information on the meetup group and our first upcoming event, please visit here.

Our first meetup will take place at Barcade in Williamsburg on June 17th at 7:00 PM.

The goal of the meetup is to really unite the floating developers living and/or working in Brooklyn and unlike some of the other meetups in NYC, this one is totally FREE. We’re just getting together to meet, hanging out , sharing some stories, watching demos, asking questions and chatting over some beers.

Brooklyn has it’s own tech scene brewing and it takes unification and interaction to perpetuate.

This meetup is my contribution to the movement!

This robot is both awesome and kinda creepy …

Last night I spent a few hours trying to figure out why every time I tried to upload a binary to the app store I was getting this error:

The binary you uploaded was invalid. A pre-release beta version of the SDK was used to build the application.

Although I had set all my build settings to iPhone OS 3.2, rebuilt code index, and cleaned the project, it just wouldn’t work. Believing this is probably due to the fact that I have the OS 4.0 SDK installed on my machine, I decided to trash the Developer folder and reinstall the SDK. This fixed the issue and I was able to submit the binary to the App Store successfully.

There must be a weird issue in the SDK where if you create your OS 3.2 project with the OS 4.0 SDK installed, there is some remnant/reference to OS 4.0 in your OS 3.2 build.

I hope this is helpful to anyone who is in a pinch. If there is an easier way to build 3.2 application and continue to have OS 4.0 installed I would be really appreciate the insight.

I won’t waste too much time on this blog post since Gizmodo has gotten more than enough attention for their recent stunt.

Here are my thoughts on the issue in no particular order:

If you are a AAPL stock holder, you should really be upset that Gizmodo didn’t do ‘the right thing’ and return the phone. Instead they chose to attempt to thwart an Apple release by releasing leaked information. It’s fun to read about rumors and see pictures of possible leaks, but when you knowingly have evidence that can really do damage, you’re crossing the line a bit. Can’t we just have fun and leave it at that?

Gizmodo will never be invited to a press event ever again.

I hope Jason Chen and the entire Gizmodo staff realizes that their actions have consequences outside of the bubble of their blog and Apple.

Gizmodo sure got lots of hits on their site but at what cost? I hope they save all that revenue to pay off the legal fees.

We’ll see how this all shakes out.

Written on my iPad

This weekend I had the opportunity to participate in iPadDevCampNYC. The event took place both in San Jose and NYC simultaneously and brought together  iPhone developers, designers, testers, and development enthusiast. I’m pretty sure I spotted a few incognito parents with their teens as well. Here’s a quick recap of the events:

Day 1
The first day was pretty much a mixer. We met at Gigapixel Creative and there was music, booze, and few finger foods. I mingled a bit with a few people, however, it was a little too loud to carry any sort of real conversation, so I left early. Before I left, I was approached by a Barnes and Noble recruiter who traded my email address for a $20 Barnes and Noble Gift Card. Nice!

Day 2
The second day included a pretty insightful industry panel which include:

• Moderator:Michael Prenez-Isbell, Director of Mobile Development at Blueswitch
• Peter Costanzo, Dir. of Online Marketing for Perseus Books Group
• Nina DeFrance, VP of Consumer Marketing for Forbes Digital
• Tarik Sedkey, Chief Digital Officer, Young & Rubicam
• Douglas Gottlieb, VP of Digital, Barnes & Noble

The general take-away from this panel is that print and advertising wants in on the iPad. These companies need iPad/iPhone developers BAD. They have no idea what they are doing since this is uncharted territory. All panel members are highly optimistic about the iPad platform and the impact it will have on their products. They are ready to embrace the platform and just need some help from developers like us.

The hackathon also started on day 2. Essentially we were tasked with coming up with some sort of iPad project. I was sitting next to @luciuskwok who I’ve known for quite some time (through twitter) and I gave him an idea for an extension to an existing project (HelTweetica) he was already working on. @thomasalvarez also joined our team and we quickly got to work.

Day 3
On the third day we listened to two presentations. One by Flurry and one by Barnes and Noble.
The Flurry talk was particularly interesting because Greg had some really insightful information into how users were behaving with the iPad. I wish I had the slides for the presentation (maybe they’ll post them) but hopefully you get the gist from the audio.

Listen to Greg Yardley, VP of Product, Flurry presentation below.

Listen to the Barnes and Noble iPad app dev team speak about the B&N app.

Day three concluded with project presentations by all teams and we even won “Best Social App”. Once the app is live somewhere, I’ll be sure to share a link. There were some really great projects by other teams including a sound activated cookbook for turning pages, a really slick boom box, a quija board, a developer text-editor for the iPad, as well as a few others.

Below are a few pics from the presentations:

Overall, the price of admission ($50) was a steal. They provided free food on both days (bagels, coffee, and OJ in the morning and Two-Boots pizza at lunch). Plus all the friends and contacts you make is well worth surrendering your weekend. Most importantly I’d like to thank the folks who put this event together. It was definitely a blast!

Today is the first day I’ve been without a “real” job in about 7 years. It’s totally weird to be home on a friday morning and knowing that I don’t have to “go to work” persay. I chose to quit my job at Apple to have a bigger impact on the world and surprisingly enough I believe these opportunities are literally around the corner.

More to come …

As I approach the end of my remote contract gig (thank goodness), I’ve been starting to ramp up my entrepreneurial activities. This obviously brings a lot of stress and unknowns into my life and I’ve really started to mentally prepare myself for what’s ahead.

I just finished Seth Godin’s Linchpin which got me pumped for what I’m about to set out to do. My main takeaway from that book (and the piece of information that most resonates with me) is the idea of gift giving and giving your art away. It’s really time to put the status quo aside and do things that I really feel passionate about. Ideas that are unique and can be considered gifts from the inner depths of my noggin. As a side note, while the ideas in Seth Godin’s book are simple, his writing style is not the greatest. It’s really repetitive and a lot of the major points are kind of …… “duh”. Regardless sometimes you need that repetition to really drill it in to your daily routine and put it into practice.

I know a lot of mac developers that are really active in the community. Unfortunately for me, being an Apple employee for quite some time now, I’ve had quite the handicap. While this may seem ironic at first, it’s true. The shroud of secrecy I’ve worked under prevented me from furthering my skills in area I was interested in. Now, however, the creative flood gates are open. I’m meeting lots of new people and I’ll even be attending iPadDevCampNYC this weekend which should be a lot of fun.

At this point in my life I have decided to take the leap and now I’ll either drown, float, or grow some fins and gills.

We’ve all heard the success stories. Indie developers quitting their day job and striking it rich with an iPhone app they developed. Learning how table views work, working with tab controllers and pinging web service APIs into the wee hours of the night. Then making a killing in the app store. With the introduction of the iPad, these stories may come even less often …

What indie iPhone Developers need to learn now:
As soon as I began looking at the iPad SDK, I realized … I’m gonna need a UI/UX Designer now.With the introduction of the iPad, existing indie iPhone developers will be forced to either:

A) learn photoshop and illustrator
B) join forces with a good graphic designer.

Creating a compelling and engaging user experience on the iPad is significantly more difficult than on the iPhone. The iPad screen real estate is greater and you (the developer) need to fill that space up with visually striking goodness.

iPad Launch Day
Today the iPad launched and many developers will head to Apple Stores (or hopefully receive their shipments on time) and instantly load up their iPad app they’ve been previously working on using the simulator. The screen real estate is larger which makes for your potentially mediocre app to look even more medicore. Especially next to some of the apps that have already been showcased. Not to mention a few of the ridiclously awesome apps include: Netflix and Marvel.

What about you Jeff ?
At first sight, I could not place the iPad in my day to day. I already have a kindle and really enjoy reading books on it because of the e-ink. However, Indian Code clients have already gained interest and will undoubtedly be requesting services for this platform. So I will eventually need to own one pretty soon and will need to work closely with graphic designers to produce awesome releases. You can get away with using lots of the built in visual elements, but at some point , if you’ll really want to push the envelope and you’re gonna have to use visual elements outside of the SDK.

All in all, it is a great time to be an iPhone, iPad , and Mac developer. There is a lot of work out there if you seek it. Find yourself a good graphic designer who can be your partner and focus on making beautiful things! So go now and get started!

You can say I’m late to the game but for my recent consulting gig I’ve had to use Skype quite a bit.  I’ve had an account for several years now but I can’t say I’ve ever had an actual audio conference till recently. Instead of using my precious AT&T minutes to call into 2 hour conferences (ick!), I dial in using Skype- which is free! Actually, only calls to toll free numbers can be made using skype so as long as your virtual conference number is toll-free, you’re golden. Calls to land lines and cell phones can be made but you have to buy calling credits first.

Skype totally owns iChat when it comes to AV sessions. The whole experience is very smooth and not to mention, the quality is excellent. If you have a Skype to Skype chat using a Mac’s internal microphone your mind will be blown- I guarantee it. If you’ve ever done an iChat AV session you will notice how much better Skype is. I’m referring to both audio AND video. Also, connection problems hardly seem to happen with Skype. Initiating audio-only and video conference sessions is super smooth and jumping in and out of sessions is very responsive.

Anyways, you should check out Skype now.

Since starting up my business, I’ve realized that motivation will be one of the biggest obstacles I will face. Although we’re a team of 4 (plus 2 advisors), it’s sometimes really difficult to keep everyone motivated, especially when a good portion of your employees are ‘part time’ and everyone is still working their day job. Its even more difficult when your products haven’t taken flight yet. There is nothing tangible that we can be held accountable for. Being considered a founding member, there are certain things I’m responsible for. The most important for me is keeping everyone motivated.

This weekend I caught the History Channel’s “Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed” and I couldn’t take my eyes of it. While Star Wars is one of my favorite films, I was never a fan of George Lucas persay. However, after watching this documentary, I was completely and utterly stunned by his determination in what he set out to do. He was hands on with every aspect of the film and it definitely showed in the finished product. Years later it is still considered by many as one of the best movie(s) ever made. I think there is something we can all learn for George Lucas, the passion he had for his art, and the way he was able to keep his entire team highly motivated throughout production. Check out the first part of the documentary below:

Quality Assurance. Often considered a luxury at many large companies and a lifeline at smaller businesses can undoubtedly make or break a product. Being able to successfully convey all of your skills during an interview and convince a hiring manager (in a short amount of time) that you are the PERFECT person for a highly sought-out position can typically be very difficult. I’ve so far held two QA positions in my professional career and I’ve interviewed for several others. While I can assure you that I’m not an interviewing guru (since I’ve both been hired and rejected from QA positions), I have collected some tips that hopefully you may find useful.

No experience? No problem!

Actually, no. Software QA jobs are pretty difficult to land. Hiring managers really take their time and usually interview A LOT of people . There are several things that can set you apart:

• Besides knowing the ins and outs of the QA process, knowing some programming languages will definitely set you apart. For those of you doing Mac testing, knowing a bit of unix, applescript, and automator can take you pretty far. I would recommend taking it a step further and educating yourself on a few more sophisticated languages such as C, Objective-C, and perhaps Python.
• Know a web language. I’ve recently discovered that a lot of businesses do not have a proper test tracking mechanism in place. While you can go down the route of setting up a custom filemaker database, however, I would recommend learning a good web language/framework. This way you can set up a good test tracking system that you or anyone else on your team can access from anywhere.
• Knowing someone on the QA team or at the company that can recommend you to the hiring manager will definitely give you a leg up on people who are probably just as qualified as you. Email or call this person and let them know you’ve applied for a job at their company. They may know someone who can put you in front of the hiring manager.

Test this “Mug” questions:
You can count on being asked to test something random. Perhaps something like a mug, calculator, garbage can, or a mechanical pen. You get the idea. Just remember that these questions are asked to see how you think and what your process is in cooking up a solution.

A good tactic for this is to draw upon any experience you’ve had in the past that may be related to the problem you are being asked to solve. I usually combine my past experience with some ad-hoc testing procedures I typically may do. You don’t want to focus too-much on the ad-hoc testing since you will most likely sound like a babbling idiot. Instead, highlight scenarios in your professional career where you may have been tasked with a similar challenge. Find similarities between the two problems and express how your solution worked then and how it can work now.

Any questions?

Always, always, always ask questions at the end of an interview. If when you are asked: “Do you have you have any questions?”, you should quickly assess your performance during the interview. If you’re unsure about your performance during the interview, just ask: “Why wouldn’t I get this job?” I picked this up from a good friend of mine (@tebo), who gave me this tip on a position I was interviewing a while back. I think this is a really good response to the ‘Any Questions?’/this-is-the-end-of-this-interview prompt. If you ask this, you’ll have a better idea of what the hiring manager’s thoughts are. You’ll also probably catch him off guard which is always fun.

If you believe you did well during the interview, ask more questions about the company and specifically the person you are interviewing with. How did they get started at company x? Who will you be reporting to? Just think of stuff to ask. Do not ask about anything about money. That should be the very last thing you talk about.

Hope this helps my fellow QA testers out there.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a really original idea involving robots. This one is REALLY good.

The Body, The Circuit, The Computer and The Voice: robot cowboy from STEIM Amsterdam on Vimeo.