rmxdave - the blog of david strack

Hello, world. Introducing Cabbie: a taxi locator for webOS

My first webOS app, Cabbie, has been approved by Palm and is available in the App Catalog.

Cabbie was written for two purposes. The first was to get me familiar with webOS development on the Mojo framework. I was able to learn how scenes are set up, how widgets work, and how to access services on the device (such as the GPS radio).

The second purpose for Cabbie is to help people make smart decisions when they are out drinking. I thought that if there was an app that could find the nearest cab company’s phone number with the push of one button, it would make it easier for people to get home safely if they’ve been drinking. It also comes in handy when you’re traveling or if your car breaks down!

The app itself is very simple. Upon launching you are presented with two options. The first option, “Find Nearby Taxis,” simply grabs the phone’s GPS location and looks for any taxi companies in the area. This is powered by Google’s Local Search so any company who fancies themselves a taxi service will appear (including limo and airport transportation). Tapping on a result will bring up a dialog panel which gives more information about the listing and an option to dial the number (which launches the Phone app and fills in the phone number for you).

I’ve also included a manual search option. The user can literally type in any city, state, or zip code and it will return the 8 nearest taxi companies. This can be useful if A) GPS signal is not available or B) you want to plan ahead for travel in another location.

Cabbie will cost $0.99 when it’s available and the money will go straight toward my wedding this summer, so please support me if you think this app would be useful!

Changes to my personal life and business coming in 2010

It’s that time of year again where we all start thinking about what we’ve accomplished the past twelve months and what the next twelve have to offer. 2010 is going to be a huge year for me. I’m going to skip the attempts at a witty introduction and pop straight into the list.

1. I’m getting married to my lovely fiancee, Sarah, in June. That’s a huge change, obviously. She won’t find out where she will be teaching until May, so as of right now we have literally no clue where we will be living. It could be anywhere in the country. Originally, I had a job lined up in Germantown but its beginning to look like that is not as certain as it once was. Odds are we will end up somewhere in Southeastern Wisconsin, though, which is exactly where I want to be.
2. I’m changing many aspects of Drivefive, my freelance design and development business. My rates will be changing and I will be more actively pursuing clients. In the past I just took the work as it came but its time to begin making a name for myself and earning some serious cash now that my largest project yet is coming to an end.
3. On January 1st, I will open the “doors” of RMX Apps, my mobile development house. My first app, Cabbie, has been in beta for a few weeks and already over 2,100 people have downloaded the trial. I’m getting ready for some significant improvements to the product and I’ll be introducing it into Palm’s App Catalog.
4. As far as college goes, I’m still on track to graduate next December. The tentative plan is to take my remaining courses via consortium at UW Milwaukee next fall. Sarah should be teaching full time then so we should be okay with me only working part-time for a few more months.
5. I plan to consume massive amounts of Mexican food. This is not a change from previous years.

It’s a little scary and very exciting to think that I have no idea where I will be living, where I will be working, and what life will be like one year from now. It will probably be the biggest change of my entire life and I’m super stoked!

These next few weeks will be spent closing websites I no longer run, preparing new ones, and finalizing Cabbie for primetime!

Buy super cheap VAST music & support a charity

Some of you may know what a big fan of VAST I am. Recently, the band launched a new charity program. You can download any one of their 4 most recent albums (Me and You, Relay EP, April, or Nude) all for $2.49 each. If you’re like me and already own all of these great recordings, there is a small package of bonus tracks (three live songs and a demo of “Thrown Away”) that is also available for $2.49. One dollar of each sale goes to one of five charities that you can choose from (Charity:Water, Feeding America, Shelter-Now, St. Jude, or Smile Train).

Even if you’ve never listened to VAST before I recommend purchasing at least one of these albums. It’s a great way to get familiar with the band and also do a little good to someone who needs it. If you are unsure of which album to choose, allow me to recommend Nude. It’s got some great songs on it and is the most varied of the 4 albums - a great blend of rock, electronic sounds, and acoustic melodies. Me and You and April are mostly acoustic records, while the Bang Band Sixx Relay EP is largely electronic. They are each very cool, though. If you buy Me and You or the Relay EP, you automatically get the 4 bonus tracks for free.

Head on over to meandyoudonate.com and check everything out.

Should developers even waste their time on a platform like WebOS?

One of the questions my fiancee asks me when I’m working on WebOS applications is “Are there even enough people that use that phone?” It’s a genuine concern, and one that I’ve had to wrestle with many times - is developing paid applications for WebOS going to be worth all the effort that I put into it? PreCentral just posted a great analysis of how much money developers in Palm’s App Catalog have been making, and to me it looks very promising. Let me explain.

Read More

Twitter's new Retweet feature would be great if it wasn't called Retweet

Recently Twitter enabled its new Retweet feature for my account. If you’re a regular Twitter user I’m sure you’ve heard all the controversy this new feature is causing. Instead of maintaining the already widely used Retweet format (people prefixing retweets with RT followed by a tag to the original user) Twitter is posting the Retweets so they almost appear as regular tweets from the original poster. The only difference is that there is a little Retweet icon with arrows and a message at the bottom of the post that tells you who retweeted it (see below image).

Know what? This would be a great addition save for one simple thing. Why did they have to call it Retweet? Why not just call it Sharing. “Shared by <x> and <y> others.” Or any other name that ISN’T Retweet. I guarantee that if Twitter had left the name “Retweet” alone there wouldn’t have been such an uproar.

This feature is functionally the same as sharing someones post on Facebook, or even “liking” a post on Facebook or Friendfeed. Retweeting was less a “repost” and more of a quote.

Instead of alienating users who feel like the Retweet format was stolen from them, just give it a different name and I promise all will be well.

See Twitter CEO Evan Williams’ explanation for this change here.

MySQL vs SQL Server 2008

So for my main gig for the past year I’ve been developing some custom software for a construction contractor in the Milwaukee area. In order to keep the project costs down, I opted to develop the software in VB.NET (arguably the quickest development platform) and use a MySQL database.

Last weekend I was working on modifying some tables and the whole dataset just got detached from the project somehow. All the tables and queries still existed, but Visual Studio was not seeing them. Since I don’t know everything there is to know about ADO.NET and how datasets work in Visual Studio, it took me hours to get everything back to normal. I have a hunch that it was a problem with the MySQL NET Connector that I’m using to get VS to talk to the database. A few other people were reporting the same vague “Corrupt Memory” errors on various support forums online.

This whole event got me thinking how this wouldn’t have happened if we used SQL Server in the first place. To make things more interesting, it turns out that this company actually has a SQL Server license (it came bundled with Small Business Server). The main reason why we avoided it is now moot. I’m coming up to a turning point where I will be releasing a major version of the software with a plethora of updates. I’m wondering if now is the time to migrate our MySQL data (which is in desperate need of optimization anyway) over to SQL Server.

This obviously requires a lot of consideration as I definitely prefer MySQL as a whole to SQL Server, but if it can prevent the hair-pulling frustration of last weekend, it might be worth a switch.