nc

Considering BERG is a design consultancy, I'd say this is more of an ad for their services first. It looks cute, and I'm sure there are people who would buy it for the novelty factor.

I'm not sure how you can compare that to CueCat? Which was a full fledged company.

You're right that I'm judging it prematurely. I haven't tried the app out yet (apparently it's not in the AppStore). But from the screenshots, and having used Instapaper - it definitely looks like a good contender.

Similar service that supports more platforms at a lower price (free).

This is better than Instapaper.

Ha, it looks like it! They're competing head on (.. will be soon).

Possibly, but I'd say if you know the places a person goes to - that's enough information to figure out what they like. Foursquare wins there with check-ins and tips (which tell you which dish to order)

Hard for them to maintain, or they wouldn't be as inclined to, if it were written in their language du jour?

We're actually working on this, really early stage but you can register your interest @ http://getchirp.com

Yup. Live in London & I code on the tube sometimes, only if it's quiet and I can get a seat. I use a Macbook Air which makes it a ton easier than if you have something hefty to carry around. It's really useful for ticking of small bits of work.

What about starting everyone off with a balance of say $5-10, and running it down after the first call with an option to top up via PayPal once over?

Wow, love love love this idea. It's like Automator for the Mac for the web, but on steriods. Perfect for people using well known apps but for a specific repeatable purpose.

Any idea on how to upgrade from the GM seed to final. It says I have a newer version and can't install it.

Wow... love the design & the UI realism. I would iterate on the font for the actual to-do though. It's very hard to read.

It's still less familiar than the bottom tab bar which is optimal for 5 or less tabs. (fewer taps required to browse between screens).

See http://cl.ly/0J082m04082N1G3C1C2o

For 5 or less tabs it requires two tabs to browse between tabs, vs. 1 tap for a bottom tab bar that is persistent.

Also as mentioned in the talk the user has just arrived from a launcher, which is why it's poor design to show another one.

Can't believe they went for the same Facebook style launcher, when it's a) used by Facebook b) only got 5 icons c) it's explicitly regarded as bad UI design by Apple (at this WWDC).

Quora is extremely useful. It eliminates a lot of my visits to about.com style websites and replaces them with structured q&a. It also adds a layer of transparency (you can see who has answered a question, their 'credentials') and get a feel for who to trust.

It's quick and the answers to any questions so far have been insightful. I fail to see how structuring all q&a dispersed over the web to a centralised site is a bad thing?

In addition Quora facilitates learning over time for topics and even individual questions I am interested. I absolutely love the follow topic & question features, i've learned a lot about topics I am passionate about using them. Information I probably would never have been able to find in any other way prior to Quora.

Agreed. The framework looks fantastic but that is definitely a deal breaker. Zooming in on the web to see text larger is such a huge use-case.

This.

See spotylist.com, discovery through non-friends playlists beats algorithms as you can understand why songs are grouped together and get a feel for a persons music tastes.

while will_paginate works fine on rails 3 it pollutes Array which kaminari doesn't. it's an easy switch as well (unless your doing some really custom stuff)

ZeroMQ is fantastic for low latency communication between processes, but probably not the best choice for building 'actor' based systems. The slides don't really provide much basis for the argument.

Erlang & Scala (for a more object-oriented feel) are both excellent for building actor based systems.

IIRC you can use cell tower loc only when using background location & geo-fences on the iPhone for local notifications.

Maybe notify a user only for 'popular' punch'd locations?

The new MacBook Airs are 'Instant On' the few seconds difference that the SSD makes compared to other Macs is actually noticeable and very much appreciated. It makes quickly turning it on to check something a lot more fluid.

TLDR lower response time increases usage.

Premature optimization much?

I'm sure they crunched the numbers to figure out the optimal price that allowed them to profit on an upsell later ;)

Scala is cool.

What about Scala and Lift?

We might have something interesting for you, product development role in Bangalore. Didn't see an email address on your profile. You can reach me at nc at appspark.us if you'd like to know more.

Definitely, I've been through a few different ones from $50-$400 and finally settled on the Klipsch X10s. You can barely tell you're wearing them.

Ruby/Scala/Objective-C devs - London, UK - funded early stage startup.

We're looking for smart people to work on customer loyalty 2.0. Drive foot traffic & loyalty at physical retail stores using the power of smartphones & location-aware applications.

We're well-funded & have an application on the AppStore already (see moviesnowapp.com), a few others are on the way.

Within AppSpark, you'll be free to work on whatever you enjoy to help drive this vision forward as we feel its important for you to own a project and feel passionate about it.

If you enjoy working on hard technical problems and want to develop software that has a measurable impact on user behaviour, shoot me a mail at nc@appspark.us.