ethyreal

Related there is a related video series if your interested:

https://egghead.io/courses/professor-frisby-introduces-compo...

we did this book for our work book club a year or so ago. most people in the club enjoyed reading it. there were issues getting the some of the examples to work at the time but that's another matter.

any proof to back up those claims?

"A lot of folks, especially Apple supporters, like to characterize Amazon as irrational, even crazy, for its willingness to live with low margins. It must be frustrating to compete with a company like that."

This assumes that Apple is actually competing with amazon. Does BMW compete with say Ford.... maybe but really they are after different markets. Apple has said numerous times they are not interested in going after the low end market.

it's also funny that I can't think of any IM services that are making money.. or rather I have no idea how they make money.

however it seems like with geo fencing and a willingness to share your address book with a new service it can do all the work for you, so it might be useful, but profitable? without selling contact info i don't get. ads in the status screen?

it seems like all you have to do is convince you friends to install the app and set locations / status they want to share and the app ( uses geo fencing ? ) updates the status for them and you when they enter those areas.

they have a "featured" profile here:

http://tapfame.com/daniel.amitay/

But I agree that requiring Facebook is always a big turn off of many people ( me included )

I've found peepcode and rails casts of be extremely helpful.

http://peepcode.com/

http://railscasts.com/

For a total beginner check out meet rails on peepcode:

http://peepcode.com/products/meet-rails-3-i

I think its like 12 bucks, but its worth twice that easy! It's fast pace, won't put you to sleep like most video tutorials. Good stuff!

Then after the basics, if you need info on a specific topic often Ryan Bates at RailsCast has covered it at least once. Most of his RailsCasts are free, but recently he started doing procasts which are top notch as well.

I guess it depends on your target market.

If it is for native english speakers then adding voice files for each kana sound would be a good thing.

For native Japanese speakers ( usually kids ) I'm not sure they need sounds.

I released something similar: http://ethyreal.com/projects/19-Kana-Trace

My app just focuses on writing the characters. My english responces mentions sounds and adding quiz functionality.

However even though I didn't think it would do well there I translated the UI into Japanese and most of my users come from Japan.

In Japan they just want their kids to practice and don't seem to care about sounds or quiz features.

But that's just my experience.

this is exactly what I was think while reading the post! at some point abstraction isn't just a something to geek out on, it is necessary.

maybe the problem is not know some assembly or at least some C when you write Objective-C or C++ you can write some really bad, inefficient code if you don't know the work the language underneath has to do. the same goes for the DOM and Javascript our assembly on the web.

i found the ever changing world of rails intimidating when i first started and that was in the wonderful world of 1 moving to 2 but at the end of the day all you really need is to get the same version of rails that your book/tutorial covers and stick with it..

in my experience it has been moments these that have forced me to grow, forced my out of my comfort zone. more often then not resulting in new friends.

its a lot like traveling alone verses traveling with friends. if you have friends around you are less likely to talk to those around you.. conversely when you alone.. the only way to meet others is to talk to them.

over time i became better at it, and now i almost prefer to start out someplace alone, slowly building new relationships.

Every keyboard in my office has had it completey removed! For that very reason.

...there are always nay sayers, who are usually wrong as time passes..

Yup! Though they take a lot of flack over the draconian control they wield, the results are a brilliant ai, out of the box accessablilty! (I sound like a dirty apple whore)

PHP is a language and Rails is a framework.

You might be better asking PHP Vs. Ruby or CakePHP, Zend Frameworks Vs. Rails.

Is it Rails that makes you happy? If so i understand CakePHP to be a rails clone in the PHP language.

I love that a four year old programming rant is still poignant.

The same short term profit paradigm that seems to prevent most corporations from engaging in sustainable business practices. Only if you forget short term profits and look to enduring sustainable profits does any sort of sustainable business model work.

Try issh I,ve used it to much success, but I have not tried with a blue tooth keyboard.