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April 5, 2010#

iPad… First impressions.

Since January 27th when Steve Jobs announced the iPad I knew that I had to have one.  Being a developer on the platform now, it is almost a necessity as all of our future apps from RedCat film will be iPhone/iTouch/iPad compatible.

This is the first time that I have directly dealt with the Apple store on a huge product launch, and I do have to say, Apple really knows what they are doing.

We arrived at the Apple Store in Clinton Township around 10:30am on April 3rd and were greeted by an Apple employee.  He asked my last name, punched it into his iPod Touch and found my reservation for 2 iPads.  We picked up 2 additional units, were in and out of the store within 10 minutes.

Now onto the device.  I do have to say that it is indeed a game changer.  I’ve had a Hackintosh Netbook before, but found my use dwindled after the first initial novelty had worn off.  Typing is really a non issue on the device, the keyboard is very responsive and easy to use (in fact, I am doing this blog post using the WordPress iPad app).  Apple really hit the nail on the head with this device.  I really do feel that it is the “In Between” device fitting in with my iPhone and Notebook.

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Speed: This thing is FAST!  I cannot believe how fast it is on tasks such as browsing and email.  I will have to go out on a limb and say that the browsing experience is faster than safari on my MacBook Pro.

Build: The first thing that got me when I unboxed it was the weight.  I was surprised on how much it did weigh.  After a day with it, it became a non issue.  The display on this thing is awesome.  Both Photos & Video looks incredible on this.

Battery life has been incredible on this thing.  I’m used to having my iPhone dead by the end of each day.  The iPad has had major use in the first few days, and I finally charged it last night.

Apps:  While the iPad app store is still in it’s infancy as of this moment, I didn’t feel as though there was many “Killer” apps, YET. I am anxious to see what this thing can do after developers have had the unit for a few months.

Surprisingly, all of the offered twitter clients are flawed.  I am waiting for Tweetie to release their iPad version.

iBooks:  I did love the ebook reader on the iPad, but where it does fall short is the iBooks store.  The buying process is easy, but the titles are very limited.  I did buy my first ebook: “Viral Loop” by Adam L Penenberg and did get 60 pages in on my first reading experience.  Apple also bundles the iBooks app with a free Winnie the Pooh book, that I did read 20 pages of to my daughter.  I was pleased that Amazon did release a Kindle app for iPad, and I find that I have been using it as much as iBooks due to the vast selection that Amazon offers in it’s book store.

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Along with the unit, I purchased Apple’s soft case.  It’s pretty good, but I’m not sure how it will stand up to day to day use.

Bottom line: This is a device that will be part of my lifestyle for quite a while.  Using it, I have found that both my iPhone and Notebook use has declined.

January 28, 2010#

RimRoller. My first iPhone app.

Last year during Tim Horton’s Roll Up the Rim contest, I started to post by results to my twitter account after each rim i rolled up.  It started with a very dismal 0-18 record, finally winning around my 20th coffee.

After each post, I tagged my tweet with the hashtag #rolluptherim.  Turns out, I wasn’t the only one:

From the National Post:

“Each year, the waning of winter means many things to many Canadians: the NHL trade deadline, last-minute dashes to the slopes, and the crisp sound of rolling coffee cup rims.

It’s quite likely that over the past week, you or someone close to you, has participated in the nation’s favourite contest: Tim Horton’s Roll Up The Rim To Win.

In the old days, if your rolling turned up a winner, you’d simply just high-five your buddies, or do some sort of happy dance in the middle of your local Timmys.

However, in these modern times, aside from practicing your rolling skills online you can celebrate your winnings and vent your frustrations via Twitter.

Using the hashtag #rolluptherim, Twitter users across the nation are keeping a tally of their winnings and failures with the contest.”

With this years contest coming at the end of February, I decided that it would be a good opportunity for myself to learn the iPhone SDK and go through the app development process.  I was interested in doing a quick test project to learn some basic functions and social networking integration, as I am about to develop a full scale application that will be a very large iPhone/iPad app.

So, here it is.  RimRoller, my first iPhone/iTouch application.

The idea behind the application, is pretty simple:

Enter you twitter login info
Buy a Coffee
Roll up the Rim
Press either the win or lose button in the app

After this is done, it keeps a tally of your Win/Loss ratio, and posts an update to twitter stating if you won or lost and your current win/loss ratio.

This is a very 1.0 release with a very crappy UI.  I just wanted to get something out to market in time for the 2010 Roll up the Rim contest.  In future releases, I plan on including Facebook connect, and the ability to specify what exactly you won.

Sticking with a quote that i read recently, “If you aren’t embarrassed by v1.0 you didn’t release it early enough” The RimRoller app was conceived, programmed, and released on the App Store in 8 days time.

Download RimRoller here.

Resources i used during the app development:

March 4, 2009#

Podcasts on the go with CastRoller & RSSPlayer.

Last week, my complimentary 1 year subscription to Sirius radio had expired.  Prior to my new vehicle purchase with Sirius radio, I was a very heavy Podcast listener, but Chrysler gave me 1 year to try out Sirius.  At first I dismissed it thinking that I would rarely listen, but after time, I found that I was splitting my listening between Sirius (mostly Howard Stern) and Podcasts.  Now that I’ve chosen not to renew my subscription, until they come out with an iPhone client, I’m back to listening to Podcasts.

Now, I very rarely sync my iPhone with my mac.  I sync my contacts & calendar over the air with Google Sync, and add new music to my iPhone once every couple of weeks.  My MacPro is my main source of my iTunes music (over 80GB), so i use SimplifyMedia to access my entire collection over the air, and keep around 3GB of music on my iPhone for quick listening.  So with the bulk of my content being streamed over the air, this was leaving me behind on my Podcasts, or after a few days on the road, I would burn through all of my podcasts quickly.

In iPhone software update 2.2.1, Apple introduced the ability to download Podcasts over the air via the iTunes mobile app.  I was very intrigued by this feature…. then I used it.  First off, It won’t download any podcasts over 10MB, so about 95% of the podcasts that I listen to.  So my next option is to stream the podcast over the air.  Well, after giving it a spin a couple of times, the results left something to be deisired.  I would be 30 mins into a 1 hour podcast, an incoming call would come in and inturrupt playback.  From there, the podcast would fail to resume, or would spend a couple of minutes rebuffering.  Very frustrating to say the least.

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Apple's Podcast Player choking on a 2 hour Podcast

Add to the fact that Apple’s OTA Podcast solution does not allow me to bookmark any of my favorite podcasts,  or us my existing OPML file, has rendered this option useless for me.

So my solution now.  Castroller + RSSPlayer.

From CastRoller’s Site: “CastRoller is an online podcast subscription tool. Users can add their favorite podcasts and will receive personalized recommendations for podcasts they might enjoy. They can add their friends and see the podcasts that their friends are listening to and share episodes with them. With CastRoller, you can manage your podcast subscriptions in once place and use the RSS feeds to have the episodes delivered to all of your devices automatically.”

RSSPLayer is a iPhone/Touch application that allows you to listen to or download podcasts on the go by adding their feed location into the app.

I’ve been using CastRoller over iTunes now since it’s launch, and find it a great resource to organize and share your podcasts, but mainly I’ve been using it as an aggregator for all of my podcasts so I have a single feed in iTunes or on my iPhone.

What I love about CastRoller is that I can simply add a podcast, it shows up in my episode feed, I can a keep separate feed for my favorite eps.

Now on the go, this is where CastRoller really shines for me.  This is the situation where I found the value in CastRoller:  I was in Burlington the day after the premiere of LOST and one of the podcasts that I listen to about the show, ‘The LOST podcast with Jay & Jack” publishes their podcast the same night that the episode airs.  I don’t listen to the podcast when the show is on hiatus, so I delete it out of my iTunes.  While I was on the road, on my iPhone, I was able to login to CastRoller, find the podcast and add it to my collection.  From there I opened up RssPlayer, refreshed my feeds and there was the newest episode of Jay & Jack waiting for me.  This was even before CastRoller had added RssPlayer integration.

Now how is RssPlayer at streaming?  Pretty good, but i don’t really care because I can now download my episodes to my iPhone with NO SIZE LIMIT! Over 3G I was able to download a 76MB episode of Smodcast in about 8 minutes.  This is the way that things should be, simple and straight forward.

Smodcast in RssPlayer (Notice that it picks up the artwork)

Smodcast in RssPlayer (Notice that it picks up the artwork)

It is no secret that I am an Apple Fanboy, but they really have a thing or two to learn about how to make OTA podcast work.  Hats off to Will at CastRoller and the RssPlayer team for the excellent work.

My CastRoller Podcast Collection.

The Channel that I have created on CastRoller – Pro Audio/Video Production

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