Up until recently I have been capturing my thoughts and things to do using the Notes App in my iPhone or iPad.  The Notes App has been pretty effective with the added benefit of mobile me sharing this information across the different platforms. iPhone <-> iPad <->Mac When it comes to managing tasks, I have seen a few Apps that allow the user to Add, Organize & Prioritize their tasks.  I’m currently using EasyTask by OrionBelt.com LLC their website is www.orionbelt.com The iPhone & iPad EasyTask Apps are free.  So far the iPad version has been working great for...

A few days ago, some friends and I were working on a budget and we needed to verify some numbers.  I thought I’d be really cool and whipped out my iPad.  Then I spent the next couple of minutes searching for a calculator on it.  It turns out there wasn’t one that shipped with my iPad.  When you visit the App Store you will see many different kinds of calculators ranging in price from FREE to $24.99. I’m currently using the FREE version of Digits Calculator from shift-apps.  The developer website is www.shift-apps.com if you own an iPad, make sure you find a Calculator...

Employees As an employee most people don’t think that much about keeping track of their time.  If they get paid hourly, their boss keeps track of their time for them.  If they get paid on salary, they get paid a flat rate for all the work they do.  When they’re away from work the time flies by until they have to return to work.  Most people don’t really think about the total cost of their time. Employee Work Related Time workRelatedHours = commuteHours + hoursWorked netWorkRelatedIncome = grossIncome – (taxes + monthlyCommutingExpenses) workRelatedWages =...

In July 2010 I finally purchased an iPad 32GB+3G with the intent of developing applications on it.  At the time of purchase I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect.  I have heard many people describe it as a big iPhone or iPod Touch.  Others have described it as a toy and not a real computer.  During the time I have owned it, I have been doing field research.  I have been getting familiar with the user interface and user expectations for iPad applications.  After all, if you understand how your customers are using their iPads and the Applications they desire then you might be able to...

Steps to avoid feature creep Create a list of features for the planned product version. Some people call this a specification. You know you can ship when the planned features are implemented and tested. Get product stakeholders approval on specified features before implementation begins. The agreement on specified features helps everybody (developers, testers, sales, marketing, customers) know what the product is supposed to do when it’s done. Create a feature wish-list to collect suggested future features. The key to avoiding feature creep is to prevent the features from...

If you need to practice on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution but don’t have the cash to play with an official Red Hat version, what are you going to do?  You’re going to look for an affordable (FREE) alternative solution.  The solution is CentOS, a distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. CentOS stands for Community Enterprise Operating System.  To find a quick overview of CentOS, visit the wikipedia CentOS site. The official CentOS website is http://www.centos.org. My initial experience with installation and configuration was very positive. The user interface was...

Sometimes we become so focused on the pursuit of a symptom of a problem that we don’t stop to ask if we are still focused on the real cause of the problem.  This happened to me recently. During the iPhone development process you have a choice of debugging the iPhone App using the iPhone emulator or using the actual hardware.  The quickest way to test out your code is to build and debug using the emulator. While developing an iPhone application for Podcast Stockton I used one of the iPhone Audio libraries. It never occurred to me that the emulator might not do everything the hardware...

Last week I was so caught up in iPhone development that I didn’t watch any of my favorite podcasts on TiVo.  This week I finally got caught up with some of them only to find out that one of my shows GeekBrief.TV had been cancelled.  I have been watching Cali Lewis for a couple of years now and was sad to see the end of the show.  To see the history behind Geek Brief TV visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeekBrief.TV After a little digging, I discovered that Cali has joined Revision 3 with a new show called GeekBeat.TV. I wanted to start following the new show.  The only problem was...