Oct

5

By andron

No Comments

Categories: mobile

Join me at the App Developers Conference

App Developers Conference (ADC) and Hackathon, taking place October 26-27, 2011 in Santa Clara, CA., addresses key components of app development, marketing and revenue on mobile devices and tablets. With an emphasis on cross platform development and revenue strategies, ADC provides key insight for both developers and business professionals. Continued…

Aug

2

By andron

No Comments

Categories: non-professional, travel

Greece was nice

Getting away from it all is needed upon occasion. Life has thrown a few curve balls my way lately. All of a sudden I need to really get super organized.
Continued…

Jun

20

By andron

No Comments

Categories: Uncategorized, Web

Every 60 Seconds on the Internet…

World Wide Web is growing at rapid pace. On average, more than a billion new pages are added to it every day. To give you an idea of how big world wide web is, our Infographic 60 Seconds will cover some really interesting facts about websites that we use on day-to-day basis.

Continued…

Jun

13

By andron

1 Comment

Categories: mobile, travel

Tags: ,

My shortest international trip

I was booked for a flight to London. It would have had me out of the country for 39 hours. Turns out that the return flight would force me to miss a meeting. This is my fault.

I had sent off my dates to the travel agency and they booked the flight and sent a conformation. Unfortunately when I reviewed the travel itinerary, I checked the times but not the dates. turns out the dates was the thing that was wrong. The change trimmed off 24 hours from the trip. Continued…

Jun

11

By andron

No Comments

Categories: mobile, What's New

New features in iOS5 Safari

iOS5 is not out yet, however the keynote gave us lots to review anyway. From the keynote here is a round up of the new features reported in the keynote to Safari in iOS5.

  • Reading list: Read it Later functionality built in to Safari now.
  • Tabbed Browsing: Finally easier to switch between sites you have open in Safari
  • Safari Reader: A nighmare to designers and advertisers, this feature simplifies the web page into just title, images and text. While this removes distractions that some sites design in it also removes ads, the bread and butter of sites.

There are also several system wide changes that enhance Safari.

  • Tweet: iOS 5 wide integration of twitter let’s you share pages faster with your followers.
  • Shortcuts: turn RTFM into what it actually stands for
  • More to come..

I don’t use a mac as my primary tool for work, but when I have time, I do use it on the weekend. Seems to me like some iOS features have moved to the Mac. It’s fascinating that the simpler apps are trickling up, while features are added. It’s the iPadification of the Mac. Many UX and UI features that started in iOS have moved up like: the App store, simplified app UX selection, : all of these started in iOS and have moved to OSX.

I’m sure there are a lot more that we will discover when iOS5 is out

Disclaimer: when it comes to apple things can change, if they do, I’ll change them here too, but no accuracy is guaranteed

What

 

May

31

By andron

No Comments

Categories: Optimization

Solution Focused Communication

Sometimes when I’m working out what goes wrong with a discussion, I’ve had trouble figuring out where things went wrong. Today this phrase came into my mind: Solution Focused Communication. This really got me thinking about how to have the most successful conversations*. What are things that get in the way of that?  Here are some of the things that I recognize get in the way.

  • Having to be right or validated by the other person
  • Surface distractions – things that are similar to the subject at hand but discussing it does not get to the problem that needs to be uncovered and solved
  • Emotions – one of the most difficult things to get around is to look at the problem from as analytical viewpoint that does not let feelings detract from the problem that needs to be solved

I’m not sure where this idea will lead, but I hope to improve my communication skills.

*Successful does not mean that I succeed in convincing the other person, rather that both of us leave feeling that we were able to learn and share our ideas. If this means that there are actions to be taken, those should be clear and agreed upon.

Apr

14

By andron

No Comments

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags:

Author Review almost done

One last chapter to go, then it’s off to the printers. We are going through Author Review currently. Janine Warner has been a great guide as I have learned what it means to be an Author. Her mantra is: I like signing them better than I like writing them. So true.

Feb

18

By andron

No Comments

Categories: 2d Barcodes, Advertising, mobile

Future Of Mobile Tagging Report

Great Presentation on the Future Of Mobile Tagging.  Covers bar-codes to Augmented Reality and social integration. See the slide share after the jump, Or download the PDF. Continued…

Feb

17

By andron

No Comments

Categories: mobile

V.gd Leads the Pack

My favorite URL shortner is now v.gd, not only is it quick and small but is truly an ethical URL shortening service. The service is supported by MEMSET®, and they also offer ‘is.gd’ – a slightly longer shortener. Continued…

Feb

17

By andron

No Comments

Categories: mobile

Writing Phase Done

The final chapters of iPhone and iPad Web Design for Dummies has been submitted. The next phase of the process involves the editors and revising as we work toward the final manuscript. Amazon’s description after the jump.

Continued…

Dec

27

By andron

No Comments

Categories: Uncategorized

7 month fake cough

All 7 month olds do it for attention.

Dec

11

By andron

No Comments

Categories: Uncategorized

The best 404 not found error screens…

The best 404 not found… Why are you here? You may be here because my domain that is hosted by a company that puts ads on your 404 page by default. I know it’s terrible, but I guess they make a good chunk of change doing it. Anyway, here you are instead of that page.

Go forth and find the right one!

Or Look at how some other more creative people achieved 404 excellence:

http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/2008/08/the-100-most-funny-and-unusual-404-error-pages/

a how to: http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2008/06/create-a-great-404-page.htm

Nov

5

By andron

No Comments

Categories: Uncategorized

http://peoplesoft.com/ = 404 error

Peoplesoft is down… has been for the last hour or so at least.

Well the server is not really down, you just get an Oracle 404 error page.

Oracle

Oracle 404

Update: Now it’s just timing out.

Nov

2

By andron

No Comments

Categories: Uncategorized

Sound in a mobile ad is a bad idea.

The first time I heard sound in a mobile ad, it was for ESPN. The familiar triumphant reveille of the theme of Monday Night Football. Bah-ba-ba-bAhhhhhh.

ESPN ad

Ba-ba-ba-bAhhhhhh!

Sound in mobile ads is new.

I think the first time I heard this ad, I wasn’t expecting it at all, and my volume was all the way up. It was like getting one of those e-mails when you click to look at beautiful scene, then the ghoul jumped up and screams and scares the crap out of you. This time I was on the can, so it actually helped (silver lining). I made a mental note to never suggest adding sound to an ad in a jarring way.

I went about my day… 2 weeks later, I get conformation that this really does pits people off. I heard this ad in Words with Friends. Today I noticed in the review section:

Customer Reviews
ads by hex9
this game is okay, but since i started playing i’ve seen the ads evolving into more deceptive forms. moving the skip button around or playing a sound amd making me wait before i can get past the ad. making me look at the ad is no big deal but trying to trick me into clicking tje ad is unethical and obnoxious
Love game but SOUND on ads???

by terrib972
I love this game but suddenly there’s a new ad with SOUND?? I don’t mind putting up with the ads for a free version but SOUND should not be allowed. I don’t want to have to mute my phone every time I want to play.

So… bad advertiser… bad.

Nov

2

By andron

No Comments

Categories: Uncategorized

Funnist thing of the day…

Gracie wants to put every thing in her mouth right now.

Attack of the GEA-monster!


Attack of the GEA-monster!
Gracie wants to put every thing in her mouth right now.

Nov

1

By andron

No Comments

Categories: Uncategorized

Hover Bear

From a story of nature… From the front…

Hover Bear Front

Hover Bear Front

And the back…

Hover Bear Back

Hover Bear Back

Oct

21

By andron

No Comments

Categories: Uncategorized

Facetime Protocol

FaceTimeOne key element in Apple‘s advertising campaign for the iPhone4 is showing family and loved ones connecting over a distance visually using FaceTime videoconferencing. It tugs at our heart strings. For me and my wife it produced the result they were hoping for: we both have an iPhone 4 force and when I travel I can call home and see my little girl (and my wife).

FaceTime is video conferencing software developed by Apple for iPhone 4, the fourth generation iPod Touch, and computers running Mac OS X. While researching for my upcoming book I came across a way to place a FaceTime call from a web page.

The link follows this pattern:

facetime://<address>|<MSISDN>|<mobile number>

for example:
facetime://+19995551234

Anatoli Levine wrote a great article on the technology behind Facetime.

Oct

8

By andron

No Comments

Categories: Uncategorized

How to use Google as a spam filter for Outlook

Spam weighs heavy on my soul. So I thought of a great way to use Gmail to filter it all out. It’s extra money unit was able to find anybody that Arctic I’ve described this so I thought I’d do it myself. I set this in two simple steps:

  1. Set-up Gmail to pull mail from your account
  2. Set-up Outlook to pull e-mail from Gmail

In order to accomplish the first step you have to sign up for a Gmail account. If you don’t already have one you can go to this address to get one: http://mail.google.com/mail/signup.

Now that you get your account we’ll set Gmail to pull in e-mail from your other account(s). Detailed instructions can be found here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=21288.

Here are the quick instructions for setting up mail fetcher:

1. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page, and open the Accounts and Import tab. (For Google Apps domains, open the Accounts tab.)

2. In the Check mail using POP3 section, click Add POP3 email account.

3. Enter the full email address of the account you’d like to access, then click Next Step.

4. Gmail will populate sample settings, but we recommend checking with your other provider to learn the correct server name and port. Enter your Password.

5. Decide whether to:

Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server

If you’d like to keep a copy of each message Gmail retrieves in your other mail accounts, select the Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server checkbox. This way, you can access mail in your other accounts, and in Gmail.

Please note that some email services may still delete your messages when Gmail fetches them. If this option is checked, Gmail will instruct the other domain to leave the messages in place, though the final behavior is up to the other domain.

If you’d rather delete copies of messages that Gmail retrieves, leave this option unchecked. Gmail will delete the messages from the other account as those messages are retrieved, meaning you’ll only be able to read them in Gmail.

Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail

If the email account being retrieved from supports Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption, you can select this option to have all information sent through a secured connection.

If you select this option, and your email provider doesn’t support it, Gmail will let you know that your configuration failed. Clicking Show error details will likely reveal a Protocol error in this case. You’ll need to uncheck this selection before continuing.

Label incoming messages

If you’d like to automatically label all messages that are retrieved from your non-Google account, select this option. You can choose to use the predefined label (your email address), or you can select an existing label or create a new one from the drop-down list.

Archive incoming messages

Mail from this account can be archived directly, without showing up in your inbox. Learn more about archiving.

6. Click Add Account.

7. Once your account has been added successfully, you’ll have the option of settingOutlook Setup it as a custom From address. This allows you to compose messages in Gmail, but have them appear to be sent from your other email account. Click Yes to set up a custom From address.

Now that Google is pulling in our mail we need to set up Outlook to pull the mail from Google. Here are the detailed instructions for setting up Outlook 2007 to pull mail from Google: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77689. If you’re using something other than Outlook here is the list of other supported clients: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=75726 .

Easy AdSense by Unreal

site tracking with Asynchronous Google Analytics plugin for Multisite by WordPress Expert at Web Design Jakarta.