Tech

It’s not exactly a secret that I post here about as often as the seasons change. Frankly, for the most part, I feel my life is not very blog worthy. So to remedy this lack of posting, I’m going to start posting more technical stuff. To start this off, introducing a new section to Romb.us: Learning to Program.

Now I know your thinking, “Rick, you know how to program!” and you would be partially right. I’ve done a lot of simple programming in a variety of languages. But transitioning to Object Oriented Programming has been challenging. I'm used to languages that work more like scripts rather than “Real” programs. I’ve spent the past month or two reading, watching and listening to various topics on the subject, and I think it would be neat to chronicle my journey to an iOS App.

I’ll explain more about why I’m doing this in my first real “Introduction” post that should be coming this week. In the mean time, be prepared for a deluge of posts. I’m probably going to be posting 2-3 times a week. I’ve been doing some backend stuff here to get ready. I got a code parser implemented, so i can post properly formatted and highlighted code in my posts. I also finally got a proper spam filter setup so I can continue to have capcha free comment posting. I also want to implement a progress bar of sorts on the left hand side.

Just out of curiosity, I'm going to post this with single spaces after the period, I have been doing 2 spaces, but i want to see if a single space will affect readability at all. Feel free to post your preference in the comments!

So i got my prize last week, and quite the kickass computer.

Rather than post all the pics and description here again, ill direct you to the [H]ard|forums thread i started.

Needless to say, its rekindled my love of PC gaming. Team Fortress 2 feels RIGHT finally. In fact, i really want to go out and pickup BFBC2 for it even though i already own if for the 360, just because i know it will look and play better. Even though im pretty much back to PC gaming, i still picked up a Xbox 360 wireless receiver so i can use the 360 gamepad on it. Games like Dirt2 and Just Cause 2 seem much better suited for playing with a gamepad rather than a Keyboard. Of course i had to load up Flight Simulator X and tool around in that for a while, just gazing at the great graphics.

I do intend to try and get up to a LAN in Akron sometime soon. Maybe even the next one if my schedule dictates.

The paperwork came in yesterday, and I got the domain name, so I guess it is official-ified and all. I am now the proud founder of RomLabs LLC!

In reality, RomLabs is not a new idea for me. It has existed for while in various forms, mostly as things I’ve stamped with an “official” sounding business name. In fact, it’s the dabbling in the past that caused me to pick the name that I did. While the first products are going to be iPhone apps, there’s no telling where it will go from there. I do have some long term goals and ideas, but I need to take care of short term things first!

http://romlabs.com is going to be the eventual homepage to my mini empire. And of course just like every new startup, you will be able to follow @RomLabs on Twitter and be a fan of RomLabs on Facebook. I’ll post more about those later once I get them ready to go public.

I have a personal goal of trying to get the first App out by the end of summer, but we will see how it goes. The next major steps business wise are going to be getting a bank account opened and getting setup in the iPhone Developer Program.

I know I’ve been pretty quiet about the whole business thing; it’s just been a busy past few weeks. Luckily though, I got my yearly bonus from TWC, which is what I was waiting on to move forward with my plans. Of course, using the term “Venture Capital” is a bit of a misnomer, since we are not talking millions, even thousands of dollars to get up and running.

So what is the big plan at this point? Well I will reveal some more, and don’t worry, I won’t bump anyone up the list for this. At its core, what I am starting is going to be a software development company with a focus on mobile markets. Gasp, I know, it’s so original right? And even more shocking, is that I plan to start with apps for the iPhone.

So what inspired this? Well for one, Apple’s tagline of “There is an App for that”. I blogged before about some of the limitations I found, even within the first week of owning an iPhone. Further I've seen examples where the apps that exist for something are just terrible. So in the spirit of Rule 34 of the Internet I have decided to take matters into my own hands and fill some gaps I have found where I think I can be successful.

Earlier today I filled out questionnaires and initial information to start the LLC creation process at LegalZoom. Now starts the 30 or so business day way to get the official documentation back. I’m waiting on LegalZoom to let me know if my proposed name is available. Once I know for sure, I’ll buy the domains, and announce it here. After that, it’s a matter of getting into the iPhone Developer Program, then the real fun will begin!

Well, it’s time to check the prediction scorecard and see how I came out:

1. An iPhone 3.0 – Sorta Kinda right

Yeah, we got a spec bump on the iPhone, and all the features I was expecting, but maybe it was a bit of a push to call it “iPhone 3.0” Its more like iPhone 3G point five. I’m a bit surprised they are leaving the 8GB 3g on the market, but the price point of $99 makes it a great entry level device. Once the AT&T exclusivity contract runs out, then we will probably see a bigger push into new hardware.

2. A Big Focus on iPhone OS 3.0 – Got it!

Of course there was a lot of what we already knew, but they snuck in the ability to rent and purchase movies, and gave us a release date of June 17th. Also neat was the “Find My iPhone” feature, But its limited to Mobile Me customers which is meh overall. Given how well Google sync works now, there are no real reasons for me to head to Mobile Me. The big looser in all of this is ATT customers, No MMS at launch (“Coming late summer”), and no word on tethering. This got some well deserved boos from the crowd!

3. Snow Leopard Focus – Pretty darn close!

So I figured they would either give us some killer features to justify the price or make it a free upgrade. Well, instead they gave us a few neat features and tweak and are going to charge $29 for an upgrade from 10.5. The question is will the $29 license allow for clean installs or will it be an “install 10.5 then 10.6” trick. As for the price, this is a shot direct across the bow of Windows 7 and MS. Given the quality of Windows 7 and Snow Leopard, it’s going to be an interesting time in the land of OSes.

4. One More Thing… with Steve Jobs – A swing and a miss!

It’s pretty clear that over the past few months Apple has been making sure that people realize it does not need Steve Jobs to be successful. An appearance by him at WWDC would probably obscure that point. Ah well!

So what was the sneaky surprise announcement that no one saw coming? A MacBook Pro Refresh. This was a surprise since they just refreshed the line back in October of 2008. Now the 15” has the non removable battery of its 17” counterpart, and a new entry price point of $1699. To get the discrete graphics, you will need to bump up to the $1999 mid level system though. The other news was that the 13” MB is now the 13” MBP with an entry price of $1,199. Overall, it was an interesting keynote for WWDC, nothing too shocking, but some nice surprises. The AT&T thing will definitely be a Friday Rant though!

So there apparently has been a mass exodus from Flickr. Cant say that i blame everyone. I, for one, have quite a love/hate relationship with Flickr. On one hand its a great tool to share your photos. On the other, while it has a extensive API, support for it seems... mixed. Thats where i run into trouble, Flickr is a great engine, but everyone wants to build the car different way.

Well, maybe saying its a great engine is a bit of a stretch. James and Jo left because there is a 200 photo limit if you don't have a pro account. Of course they keep your photos, but you have to pay the $25 a year if you want to get any besides the 200 most recent photos. Personally, i dislike the limit of photo sizes. I spent about an hour trying to figure out why i couldn't get my iPhone pictures in their full size. I thought the Apps were uploading at 1024x768 when in fact it was Flickr that was limiting them.

This is my major issue with all single purpose sites like Flickr. They control there service, I want to be in control. And to that end, my goal over the next few months is to integrate a photo blog and a picture album into this site. There are a few issues with this. One is finding a good drupal module to setup the album and blog. The other is actually being able to photoblog. I have to find a way to either use some API or FTP into my server to upload a photo. I would use the most obvious method of email, but right now I'm using google apps, so thats out. Another issue is the iPhone app to do what i want. That may actually have to be done in house, so another reason to buy the book and start learning to develop for the iPhone. I need to do more research into this issue, but expect more posts about this soon.

Im also considering integrating my Twitter status into the site somehow. Also i don't think I'm going to keep my photoblog relegated to the left column, i think ill include them as normal posts to my site, so they show up in RSS feeds. In the end, i think my normal posts and photoblog posts would complement each other pretty well.

On a side note, i know i've been missing my Friday Rants. Ill be picking them back up soon. Since i don't work on Friday any more i simply keep forgetting to write them.

Rather than try do do a massive one time review, I figured it might be better to do smaller reveiews every once and a while on the iPhone. After a week here are some of my thoughts, and some small reviews of apps and accessories I’ve been using recently.

iPhone itself: It’s been a great device so far. Except for some obvious limitations (No Video, No MMS, No Copy/paste) I’ve been completely happy. I’ve been running into some issues due to other strange choices the dev team made, like the way photos are handled, and what size they are sent out. Why can’t I send an email with the full resolution photo? Who knows!

Power Support Anti-Glare Film: These offer great screen protection, at the cost of an ever so slight granular look to the screen. For me, it’s a small price to pay for a great feeling screen that does not seem to gather too many fingerprints.

Speck CandyShells: Possibly the best protection of the iPhone I’ve seen that’s in a “regular” case form. Soft silicone inner with a hard plastic outer shell is a great combination. Colors are a bit iffy. Melissa got a Black/Yellow case that looks cool. My Dark Grey/Lime green case looked a bit darker on the site. I would instantly buy a Black/Blue case, or even a true Black/Lime Green case. Great Cases!

App Store: Rather than go through all the apps ive tried (quite a few.) I’ll highlight some ones i like in the coming days. It’s important to note that the App Store is 75% knock off poor apps, while 25% are truly worthwhile apps. It’s hard to wade through the crap to get to the good stuff. I mean really, does there need to be over 120 apps that come up when you search “Fart”?

I have been itching to get back into electronics more heavy and back into development ever since getting my iPhone. And to that end, I'm thinking about picking up Programming in Objective-C since Objective-C seems to be the language for the iPhone and OSX. I want to build electronics that communicate with the iPhone and vice versa just for fun. Unfortunately, the biggest problem in the way of doing this is getting access to the iPhone developers program. I can get access to the iPhone SDK, but i have to shell out $90 if i want to be able to release actual apps and try them on actual hardware rather than the iPhone simulator. Granted, if i do decide to do it, i COULD release a simple fart app, charge $0.99 and hope that 90 people buy it :D

After an impressively simple process at the Apple Store, i can now say I'm a iPhone owner. Seriously though, I've never had a cellphone buying experience go as smooth as that one did. The only 2 catches were having to buy each one sepratly due to a AT&T rule, and when the guys PDA locked up halfway though the transaction and he had to reset it.

So far I'm pretty impressed. They are a fun to use. I love being able to type on a full keyboard, even though it was a bit weird at first. I've gotten used to the way to type on it and I'm getting pretty quick. Melissa misses not being able to take video, but hopefully either they will enable an app with that, or we can get a decent digital camera with video capabilities later this year.

Protection wise, we both have Power Support Anti-Glare Film screen protectors. We have 2 Speck CandyShell cases coming later this week. They just came out at MacWorld, but have been getting some great reviews. We will see later this week.

Since i now have a way to upload photos i take anywhere, i added a photoblog box over there to the left. Currently it shows the 4 most recent flickr photos, but i might screw with it a bit to make it better. The first 4 photos are all from my office, a secret look at the mysterious RNOC.

Well, the time has finally come to bid farewell to Sprint as my cell carrier. Its a bit funny to me that for the past 6 years, this will be the 4th carrier swap for me. I started with T-Mobile when i started at Kent. When we moved to the Brimfield Duplex there was no Tmo service, so i went to Cingular. When i moved to my apartment in the Falls, i moved into a Cingular Dead zone, so i moved to Sprint. Now I'm going to AT&T, which is basically Cingular, but its a new name, so it counts as a new provider for me. Thats how it works, right?

I think its important to note that I've never had any real complaints about any of the companies I've been with short of coverage issues. Sprint has been a bit more annoying recently with its sales calls and text messages, but they are few and far between once you tell them no once or twice! The real reason I'm leaving sprint is 2 fold, Coverage in the apartment is weak (seems to be the status quo when i move) and they don't have the iPhone.

Yes, i may be an "Apple whore" but that's a discussion for another day. I just like the iPhone when it comes to smart phones. Apple seems to really be pushing the cell phone market forward. And to that end, i already have the device name picked out for my new phone, straight from the game I've been playing recently: Pip-Boy 3000

So tomorrow, i get to have my first real experience making a major purchase at the Apple Store. For those that care, Me and Melissa are keeping our current numbers, so no having to tell a new phone number to tons of people. Wish me luck!

Like I stated a few weeks ago, I’m considering building a new computer next year. To that end, it finally has a name: Project Epsilon. And now that i have a name I added a work log section to this site. The worklog is going to document the process from conception to completion. Updates to begin with will be few and far between, mainly just research notes and ideas I have, but hopefully in the fall of next year things will pick up.

Normally, i will be posting worklog entries on the front page, but since i did not want to double post, the first worklog entry is available on the worklog page itself:
Project: Epsilon Worklog