I’m currently in the process of switching my blog over from Mephisto. I don’t see much action on the development side of things for Mephisto so I thought it would be a good idea to move on. It’ll also free up some resources for other things on my server since Ruby on Rails and Mephisto have never been known for their memory saving skills. My original idea would be to move to WordPress. It’s maintained. It has a HUGE community. And it “just works”. But then I would still have to maintain another piece of blog software on my server and I don’t feel like I post enough to worry about it. So, to Tumblr I go! I don’t want to lose what I have on here now so I’ll be going through a process of converting this blog into static HTML. I’ll also be getting rid of any extra links and keep it all about the content. If you notice any weirdness in the theme here or anything out of the ordinary, it’s probably me moving some stuff around. I’ll try and get it sorted out ASAP. Just a heads up!

I don’t understand why more web developers aren’t using a lot of the great features in Mobile Safari when they’re re-formatting their sites for iPhone-type devices. AdMob is a great example of how to do it. If your a developer that uses AdMob for serving up your ads, you probably have seen their mobile formatted site (m.admob.com). There’s an attention to detail involved that (for some strange reason) doesn’t exist elsewhere. Granted, a lot of this polish comes from some smooth transitions, but I feel like they make the site feel more like a native app and less like just another website. Bank of America is a good example of what not to do as far as I’m concerned. They have a native app and a web app. The problem is, the native app is just a crappy wrapper for the web app. They also haven’t taken the time to optimize anything. A huge company like Bank of America should have the funds available to at least come CLOSE to the smoothness of AdMob. Bank of America’s site just feels cheap and thrown together. I don’t really have a point here. I just thought about this when I logged in to AdMob’s mobile site the other day and was reminded how much they nailed the basics of what can be done with Mobile Safari and how little I’ve seen of it elsewhere.

I’ve been having a strange problem with my wireless Xbox 360 headset that would not let it sync to player 1. It kept going straight to player’s 2-4 (even though there was no controller connected for those players). It turns out, after using a wired headset for so long, some sort of buildup inside the connector tricks the controller into thinking it still has a headset connected. I blew out the connector at the bottom of the controller and wiggled a toothpick around in all 3 of the holes and low and behold, it worked! I can’t be certain this isn’t going to crap out on me or anything, but I saw a lack of support for this issue on google so I thought I’d throw it out there and hope it helps someone.

UPDATE: Facebook has moved a couple of things around while “simplifying” their privacy controls. Most of the information here is still valid, though. You want to “customize” your privacy settings and not use one of their defaults for the most control. I was going to try and keep this updated, but it’s almost better if I just make a new post on my new blog.

I get a lot of questions about how to use Facebook’s new (ish) privacy features so I thought I’d go through a quick 101 tutorial on settings things up and using them effectively. I’ll try and keep this as simple and quick as possible but I will also be covering all you really need to know about keeping your Facebook profile and the information you post on it safe.

Where do we start? We need to create some friends Lists. A friends List on Facebook is just a collection of friends for your eyes only. Your friends will never know what lists they are in (unless you tell them) so they’re just for you. If you really WANT to go all out and create that “Assholes” list, feel free without worrying about a thing. Follow the pictures and this should go swimmingly.

Select Account -> Edit Friends from the top menu of Facebook

Here is your friends page! This page will recommend friends to you as well as give you various methods of organizing them. We want to view ALL of our friends right now..

Select Friends from the left side under Lists

There we go. Now we have all of our friends to look at. Let’s start organizing them by creating a new list…

Read the Rest

The new year is hours away. Even though I know time is relative and that flipping a calendar to a new year doesn’t actually mean anything in the grand sceme of things, for some reason there’s comfort in it. Here’s a few of the things I’m looking forward to in 2010..

Movies/TV: The Lovely Bones, Kick-Ass, Harry Potter, Lost, Alice in Wonderland, Social Network, Always Sunny In Philadelphia..

Technology: New iPhone, Apple Tablet (Not that I’ll get one, just to see what it’s all about), CES..

Goals: Knock out the few iPhone app ideas I have floating around in my head right now, Think of more ideas and knock those out, Get some freelancing started, Move.

Short list, I know.. Just threw this together real quick off the top of my head. I really am looking forward to the new year, though. I hope everyone’s deployments into 2010 goes swimmingly and I hope everyone stays safe. Happy New Year!

An update to iPregnancyTest was just approved by apple that includes a couple of tweaks here and there. There’s a one time notice about iPregnancyTest’s support for Facebook that reminds you to log in so we can use your Facebook friends as a basis for the Baby-Daddy Generator. Speaking of the Baby-Daddy Generator, there’s also a new “Baby-Daddy Generator Preview” feature that allows you to see who our “super scientific tests” have determined to be the Baby-Daddy before launching Mail or asking for your permission to post a feed story to Facebook. Update your apps now or, if your don’t already own iPregnancyTest, pick it up from the App Store now.

My iPhone started acting up a couple of days ago. Any time the screen went blank (either via auto-lock or if I manually hit the lock switch) it took about 30 seconds and the iPhone would just shut itself off. If I turned off auto-lock, the phone stayed on for as long as it could (battery dependent, of course). It also only seemed to have this problem when running on battery power. Very strange problem, indeed. I restored my phone and set it up as a new phone and thought that would clear it right up. It definitely did not.

Next step, set up an appointment at the Genius bar nearby so I could stop there before work that evening. I walked in and talked to a very nice Apple Genius. I explained my problem to him and he only really had one option that he could try on his end. He was going to “restore” the firmware in case something went wrong there. Alas, it was not looking good for me. Until the king gentleman said to me “Well.. your phone appears to be a couple months out of warranty…”. I had gotten my iPhone 3G the day it came out, so I already knew this. But then he went on to say ”.. but, we’re going to cover it for you. How about you just consider this a lucky day for you?”.

I was ecstatic! As much as I kind of want a 3GS, I figured I could make due with what I had until the NEW new iPhone came out later next year, but this plan was going to be thrown out the window if I had to subsidize another phone through AT&T as soon as they would let me. So now I should be able to make due with my iPhone 3G for another 7 months or so. Thank you Apple!

Which begs the question. With all the talk about iPhone killers lately, and all blackberry vs. android vs. iPhone debates, I can’t foresee a similar situation happening when you take your G1 or Droid or Whichever Blackberry 10 Billion that you have in after the warranty has expired and your experiencing some strange behavior. If you know anyone who has done this, I’d love to hear about it. I know it happens with much greater frequency with Apple products, though.

So, again, Thank you, Apple.

An update to Poke A Keith was pushed threw by Apple yesterday that includes OpenFeint support to add online achievements and leaderboards! There’s even a chatroom so you can talk with other Poke A Keith players or anyone on the OpenFeint network! Leaderboards let you compare your scores in a variety of categories with your OpenFeint friends as well as the world! It’s all available now so go get it!

Until today, the only options you had for private web browsing were either kind of shotty and thrown together really quick or much more expensive than anyone should pay for such a thing. Secret Browser was approved and released on the App Store today to solve those problems! I made sure to try and squash all the annoyances of other private browsers out there now as well as threw a very reasonable price tag on it. How does FREE sound? Head over to the App Store now and download Secret Browser. Let me know what you think!

P.S. You can also go ahead and follow @secretbrowser on twitter or just follow my twitter list for all of my apps!

Twitter just updated not too long ago with their new Lists feature and I thought it would make a great opportunity to create my own list of my iPhone apps and whatever other applications I create that could warrant a Twitter account. So check out my new Twitter List at http://twitter.com/swemoney/apps and follow the hell out of it!

Update: I changed the name of the list to just “apps” so it’s much easier to remember..