stevenp

Right now transit directions are dead in the water since nothing in the App Store supports the new API yet.

"stant" is for "instant".

You seriously think they don't? I refuse to believe that design decisions like this are made with absolutely zero feedback or human input. Google is an incredibly data-driven company. They always have been. Design changes can serve a multitude of purposes for a company. They can be trying to make a dated interface look better, make it easier to use for "average" users, or a combination of both. The thread was very informative in terms of explaining the rationale behind the design changes, and the fact that Google was so open about this leads me to believe that they do consider the human factor. With all due respect, your comment makes you sound exactly like the people I'm describing.

It's interesting -- I've been living in a furnished rental in Hawaii for the last few months where I have a very small TV (maybe 22"?) and I've had my Apple TV hooked up to it since I got here. Before the update, I found it very hard to read the menus across the room, but I do think the new design is much better for smaller screens. I have a feeling the giant blocks would irritate me if I still had my 60" plasma (sob I miss that TV) but for a more modest screen, it really makes life easier. Ideally I'd love to be able to mirror the menus in the Remote app so that I don't have to squint to read the Netflix reviews and descriptions.

Dealing with nasty user feedback like this is one of the most painful parts of running a product. It still amazes me how many people refuse to consider the fact that there are humans on the other end of the computer. Instead, a lot of these arguments turn into accusatory conspiracy theory threads, as though things changing is a sign of some "secret plan". Is it that hard to believe that a product team is just trying their darndest to create the best product they can? Sometimes they'll get it right, and sometimes they won't, but constructive feedback always goes further than angry fist shaking. There's something about feedback for products on the internet that brings out extreme paranoia in people, and I don't get why that is.

My experience working with Solr is that a lot of the time people don't have a good working knowledge of how to optimize an index because it's so easy not to. At my last job, the initial implementation they we involved storing the full text of millions of documents, even though they never needed to be retrieved (just searched). If you're running Solr as a front-end search for another database, the best way I've seen to optimize performance is just to make sure you're not storing data unnecessarily.

Maybe everyone already should already know this, but I was working on a very smart team, and we totally missed this initially. Setting "stored" to false for most fields resulted in a 90% reduction of the index size, which means less to fit into RAM.

Interesting. Does that mean that the companies like Placebase (which Apple acquired) weren't generating their own map data? I guess I just assumed that they were, but the small amount of info I can find on them now makes it seem unclear.

We know that Apple is working on using their own map technology based on some of their acquisitions. Is it possible that OSM is just a stop-gap until their own maps are ready to go? Perhaps they didn't want to enter into another licensing agreement with Google if they're going to be ready to switch to their own solution later this year with iOS 6?

I noticed this today on Usenet. I've switched to downloading all my TV from torrent sites to Usenet because it's much more reliable. Everything old is new again. It's nice to see that the animated shows I enjoy like Family Guy are available in HD resolutions at roughly the same download size as their previously available SD counterparts. I assume animation is really efficiently encoded with h264. Anyway, smaller files and higher quality = happy me.

There's a difference between downloading music (albeit illegally) and taking someone else's work and trying to pass it off as your own. When I download a Duran Duran album, I don't post it on my website and claim that I made the album and attempt to sell it as my own (as much as I wish I was Simon LeBon).

This isn't an issue of piracy -- it's an issue of plagiarism, which is quite different in my opinion.

Great. Now, thanks to Space Quest III, I will not get any work done this month.

I too was one of the contributing authors on iPhone Cool Projects and I also had to run around chasing people to get paid my "advance" months after the book had already been published.

I did have a contract in place before starting, but Apress just ignored it, and the only way I was able to track anyone down was to ask another more popular author to help me find someone who could get me paid. My contacts at Apress basically just ignored my emails and phone calls.

None of that even touches on the antiquated process where I got to spend hours screwing around with a bunch of confusing MS Word templates because most of an author's time is clearly best used trying to correct style errors. The entire process had me wondering if this is really how these books get created. If it is, I decided it definitely isn't for me, especially considering the minimal pay.

Needless to say, I had a pretty awful experience with Apress too, which is a shame, because I'm not a prolific blogger like Mike, and getting to have my name on the front of a technical book was a really exciting achievement for me. I'm proud of the work I did, but not really sure that I'd ever want to go through this again.

The design of this blog reminds me why I rely so heavily on Instapaper to read blog posts. It's as though someone etched a blog post into the surface of an IKEA desk.

I'm sure that you put a lot of time into this post, so you shouldn't distract from the content by having a design that makes it harder to read.

The fact that foursquare was beating Gowalla 100:1 is proof that you don't have to have a better, more fun-to-use, better designed product in order to win in the market.

My love affair with Gowalla was prematurely extinguished when they pivoted to local guides, but I hope that this acquisition means that they'll bring some of their original magic to Facebook.

Let me be the first sourpuss to say that "Get your shit in order" is a bit jarring for a headline.

In order to use a phrase like that, I think you need to balance it with something that offsets the shock, and you don't have so much as a screenshot of what you want me to register for. "Get your shit in order" doesn't build the trust necessary to let you have access to my information.

Your landing page copy also talks about what your product shouldn't be used for (keeping kids "on top of their chores") which basically eliminates a common use case before registration, but it's really vague on what it is you're offering me.

That pull quote blew me away. This guy comes across as totally arrogant, plain and simple. Even Steve Jobs, who Nguyen apparently worships, got inspiration from other people's products. If nothing else, this article is a great warning against ever working for this guy.

Thank God. I'm not used to stories like this having this kind of ending, so this is a welcome sigh of relief.

Seeing how her friends and coworkers cared enough to start a massive online campaign to help find her reminded me of the importance of making connections and having people in my life who are looking out for me.

Gorgeous. It looks like the bulk of the functionality here is made possible by jQuery Waypoints (http://imakewebthings.github.com/jquery-waypoints/). The custom script that contains the bulk of the in-page logic is pretty basic. I'll definitely have to check out this plugin at some point in the future.

I highly recommend that you consider having a designer (or a different designer) take a stab at your icon. It's the first thing people notice when looking at your app, and right now it's pretty unappealing. The app itself and your website look a lot better -- bring the icon up to that level and I think you'll do much better.

My personal rule of thumb has always been: "When it stops being fun and starts being work, it's time to find something new." I try to keep my count at "zero" hours as much as possible.

I've never personally been able to get any use out of the voice control feature of iOS. In fact, after trying it a few times, the only time I invoke it now is by accident. I hope that Apple kicks some major ass on this feature and creates another "how did I ever live without this" moment.

Don't miss the tiny footnote at the bottom that mentions that they repeatedly spelled his name "Macro" and his website "Macro.org" in correspondence. These BI guys are truly a class act.

I've done well for myself but I was definitely not a great student. My theory (which may be wrong) is that it has to do with the fact that some kids learn differently from others, and don't necessarily do well following the traditional public school model.

I was the kid that never did his homework, never read the books before the quiz, and always skated by, primarily because I only like doing things that I know I can be great at -- things I'm passionate about. I was always spending my time hacking on computers and learning things about software development while other kids were studying for the AP exam.

There are plenty of overachievers in school that go on to do great things, but public education doesn't seem to be well-suited for those of us that excel at taking a more unconventional path.

"All future in one place" is definitely incorrect. "Your future in one place" or "Your future, all in one place" might make more sense.

I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who keeps all that stuff. A few months ago I went back through some old chat logs to find the first time that I chatted with my best friend, and it was a lot of fun to relive that part of my life.

I think people don't realize that the volume of digital artifacts we're creating is going to be staggering when we look back at them a century from now. That's one of the reasons I like to check in places. I imagine what it would have been like if my grandfather had traveled the world with Foursquare in the 1930s -- maybe I'd be able to visit the pubs where he drank in Copenhagen, or the port he arrived at when he met my grandmother in Glasgow.

My life might not be that exciting, but I'm definitely leaving a trail behind. My grandchildren will wonder why I checked in so much at the Palo Alto Creamery. :)

This is awesome. Thanks for the tip.

AFNetworking looks great, but I'm also curious as to what the advantage is over ASIHTTPRequest.

Honestly, the lack of a good API by any provider is one of the biggest barriers to entry in this space. I wonder if the Hipmunk guys might release one? I'd be thrilled to send affiliate traffic to the first company that makes good on this.

The way I've learned to deal with this is that I listen enthusiastically, and then I ask the person with the idea to come back with sketches or something more concrete. That has, so far, eliminated 100% of the ideas outright. When someone really serious comes to me with a concrete idea, I'll know it, and then we'll talk for real. Asking the person with the idea to do a little work to make it real is a great way to determine how serious they really are.

Thiel also wants to build a magical libertarian island off the coast of San Francisco with no laws. Money tends to turn some people coo-coo-bananas, apparently. http://theweek.com/article/index/218393/libertarian-island-a...