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Filed under: Developer

Filed under: Developer, Web services, Search, Web

Find out GPS co-ordinates with Get Lat Lon

by Nik Fletcher Oct 3rd 2009

For the last few months I've been working on a small side-project away from Download Squad that requires the use of GPS co-ordinates. Whilst the system I'm using has some default co-ordinates built-in, I really needed a way to find out the latitude and longitude for a few other locations around the world to give my little project a test. After wrangling with Google Maps URLs, and trying to extract the GPS data from their URLs - admittedly a little unsuccessfully - I finally came across Get Lat Lon - a super-easy mash-up that lets you search for (or locate on a map) the place you're wanting the location data for.

It's arguably a niche tool - however if you're looking for a quick and easy way to find out the latitude or longitude of a place on the globe, Get Lat Lon is just the ticket.

Tags: Geolocation, Google Maps, GoogleMaps

Filed under: Business, Developer, Internet, Blogging, E-mail, Web services, web 2.0, Web, Lists

Tell DLS: What are your Top 10 Web Apps?

by Nik Fletcher Sep 28th 2009

We're continuing our Tell DLS column by leaving the desktop and heading to the web. There's tonnes and tonnes of webapps out there -- however here's just 10 that I use day-in, day-out. If you're got any other favourites, be sure to leave them in the comments!

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Tags: basecamp, facebook, flickr, instapaper, lists, tumblr, upcoming, web-applications, web-apps

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Filed under: Developer, Social Software, Microblogging

Oneforty: an app store for Twitter

by Jay Hathaway Sep 25th 2009

I know there are a lot of third-party apps and services built on Twitter, but I had no idea how many until I heard about Oneforty. Oneforty is a Twitter app store that currently lists a staggering 1,300+ apps. These include everything from Twitter clients to third-party services that add additional features to Twitter using the API. Oneforty is in private beta right now, but you can request an invitation to get a look at the goods.

You currently can't buy apps from Oneforty itself, but you can click through to the iTunes App Store or the site of each individual application. Apparently, plans are in the works to sell the apps directly from the Oneforty website. The site is sorted by category and ranked by popularity, making it easier to find the apps you're looking for. I'm not sure developers are going to be wild about Oneforty: considering the business challenges iPhone developers face because there's a central clearinghouse for all apps, I'm sure they're hoping Oneforty attracts some competitors.

[via TechCrunch]

Tags: app store, apps, AppStore, oneforty, twitter

Filed under: Developer, Utilities, Web

Easily find changes in text and code with Quick Diff

by Nik Fletcher Sep 25th 2009

If you're a developer looking for changes in code then there's a tonne of applications available for comparing two bits of code, but what if you're writing a paragraph and want to easily see the differences between two copies? It's complete overkill to create two text documents and feed them into your file comparison app of choice.

That's where Quick Diff comes in: a super-simple webapp that lets you enter two pieces of text (or code) and quickly compare them side-by-side. Sure it's not the prettiest web-app you've ever seen - but for a quick-and-dirty text comparison, I've not seen anything quicker.

Tags: code comparison, CodeComparison, diffing

Filed under: Design, Developer, Microsoft

Microsoft launches Website Spark, hopes web devs will take candy from strangers

by Lee Mathews Sep 24th 2009


Last year Microsoft debuted Dreamspark, which gives university students access to truckloads of development software at no charge. In April of this year, the program was extended to include high school students.

Now, they're spinning off WebsiteSpark, a variant aimed at small businesses that want to make a splash in the web design and development world. If you employ fewer than 10 people and want in, here's what you can get - without paying a penny up front:
  • 3 Visual Studio 2008 licenses
  • 1 Expression Studio 2 or 3 license
  • 2 Expression Web 2 or 3 licenses
  • 3 users licenses for Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008
  • 4 processor licenses for Web Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 for self-hosting
There are, of course, conditions that have to be satisfied and it's not totally free. There is a paltry $100 fee that you must pay when your company exits the program. Membership can also last no more than three years, after which time Microsoft, of course, hopes you sign on as a Network Partner.

You've also got to roll out a new app or web site within six months of joining. If you hit it big and get bought out or go public, the WebSpark free ride is over. Though you likely wouldn't care, since you'd be swimming around in a Scrooge McDuck-sized pile of loot.

Tags: dreamspark, web-design, web-developer, website-spark

Filed under: Business, Developer, Blogging, Google

Webmaster 101: Keyword Metatags don't mean a thing

by Nik Fletcher Sep 21st 2009

No matter whether you're a web-developer, blogger or website owner, you've no doubt heard of metatags. These small snippets of information are great for hinting at the page's content - however since their inception, these tags have been open to abuse in attempts to game search engine results, none more-so than the "Keyword" metatag.

In recent years, Google has long-ignored the keyword metatags - and a post today from Google's Matt Cutts confirms that the search engine's results remain unaffected by any keyword metatags you may place in a page (and it's important to remember that Google continues to support other metatags as part of their Page Rank algorithm). One other metatag - the description metatag - is also ignored in determining results, but normally the description tag's data is used as a snippet to describe each hit on a results page.

Tags: Google, Metatags, SEO

Filed under: Business, Developer, Adobe

Adobe gets into advertising biz, teams up with Gigya

by Jay Hathaway Sep 21st 2009

After Adobe's recent acquisition of analytics giant Omniture for $1.8 billion, there was a lot of speculation that Adobe was beginning a foray into the advertising. Now we've got some more clues, since Adobe's partnering with Gigya, a company that distributes widgets and advertising. Now, Adobe's got its fingers in every part of the process, from content creation to ads to analytics.

Adobe's new Distribution Manager lets developers share their Flash widgets on 70 sites, tracks traffic for the widgets, and serves ads. Destinations include Facebook, MySpace and iGoogle, amongst others. It also supports mobile devices, including Windows Mobile and Symbian phones. The iPhone is also (sort of) supported, but without Flash, the widgets have to be part of approved app store apps. Developers can follow their traffic and ads with - what else? - an Adobe Air app.

[via Techcrunch]

Tags: adobe, ads, advertising, distribution, false, flash, widgets

Filed under: Developer, Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity

Snippet: quickly save and reuse bits of code on your Mac

Macby Jay Hathaway Sep 18th 2009

Snippet is an OS X app that gives you quick access to snippets of code you want to reuse in your projects. it sits in your menubar, and its most important functions are accessible without using a mouse. You can add new snippets and search your saved ones using hotkeys, so you don't break up your workflow. Once you grab a snippet, it'll send the focus back to the window you were coding in, no clicking necessary.

You can keep track of your snippets by tagging them with keywords for better searching, and labeling each one with the appropriate language. Snippet also syncs over MobileMe, so you can access your code on multiple Macs (which is great if you have separate work and home machines). The downside to Snippet is the $12.95 pricetag, but it's the kind of app you'll use for work every day if you end up liking it, so the price is definitely not unreasonable.

Tags: code, coding, mac, menubar, snippet

Filed under: Developer, Linux, Apple, Novell, Commercial, iPhone, Mobile

monoTouch .net development kit now available for iPhone

Linuxby Paul O'Brien Sep 14th 2009


While the Apple App Store is without doubt the largest available medium for a mobile developer to get their app in the hands of the users, for developers new to development using C / Objective C, the barrier to entry can be quite significant. Many developers working with other platforms (particularly Windows / Windows Mobile) have made significant investment into products developed in the .net languages (e.g. C#, VB.net) and therefore may be reluctant to completely port their application to a completely new environment.

Enter Novell with a commercial offering of their open source 'Mono' .net runtime dubbed 'monoTouch'.

Available immediately, monoTouch enables applications developed in any .net language to run on the iPhone. Significantly, monoTouch provides .net bindings to native API, allowing application developers will have access to iPhone specific functionality from within their .net applications. monoTouch integrates with both the free MonoDevelop IDE as well as Apple's XCode toolkit.

Applications developed using monoTouch compile completely to native code - they are not JIT compiled or interpreted.

Read more →

Tags: .net, iphone, mobile development, MobileDevelopment, mono, novell

Filed under: Developer, Blogging, Open Source, Web

Build your own Tumblog with Chyrp

by Nik Fletcher Sep 14th 2009

As a heavy (and admittedly very proud) Tumblr user, I frequently get asked "Can I self-install Tumblr on my own webspace?" and have answer "No". That's not a big deal to most people - it's possible to use custom domains with Tumblr, customise the look and feel of your site and more directly from within Tumblr - but for the slightly more technical, it can be a deal-breaker.

If you're wanting to self-host something similar, however, Chyrp is a light-weight blogging engine that allows you to self-host a Tumblr-style blog, right down to the specific Tumblr post options such as Link, Quote, Text, Video and Image. It's also pretty extensible, with extra modules and 'feathers' available for users to add and enhance their sites.

Chyrp certainly isn't for the average Joe, looking to set up a blog without any fuss - however if you're looking for the style and speed of a Tumblog, and want to delve into the code to customise its design and function, it might be right up your street.

Chyrp is available under the GNU General Public Licence (version 3) for your hacking pleasure, and requires a PHP5 / mySQL or SQlite compatible webhost.

Tags: Tumblr

Filed under: Developer, Social Software, web 2.0

Ning gets 90+ OpenSocial-powered apps

by Jay Hathaway Sep 14th 2009

Ning, a popular web service that lets you set up your own Facebook-style social network (and hosts it for you) just added something that Facebook and MySpace have had for quite a while now: apps. Like applications on those other, bigger, networks, Ning Apps are powered by OpenSocial, a much-hyped API for building third-party apps that work on multiple social networks. Open Social has been around for years, making slow progress: maybe becoming available on Ning's 1.5 million different sites will help.

Ning Apps allow network owners to provide additional functionality to their users, often through integration with other sites. For example, Ning is currently highlighting video apps from Qik, Hulu and UStream and collaboration apps from Box.net and Google Docs. In total, there are more than 90 apps available, with more coming soon, as the Ning team explains on the official blog.

Customized site designs are a big draw for Ning, and the apps have all been designed to match your network's appearance, so you don't have to worry about becoming a Fugly Friday candidate when you add new features. Apps also integrate with Ning's tabbed navigation, letting you add an app as a separate tab that you can organize and rearrange. OpenSocial developers can also build their own Ning apps, so don't despair if you don't see one you want - it might be on the way soon.

[via CNET]

Tags: apps, ning, opensocial, social, social networking, SocialNetworking

Filed under: Developer, Games, Browsers

WebGL: bringing native 3D graphics to your browser

by Jay Hathaway Sep 14th 2009

One of the most-anticipated features HTML5 promises for the web is the canvas tag, which allows for dynamic rendering of 2D images. If you can use HTML to draw a 2D image, can native 3D graphics be far behind?

The WebGL project is making that a reality by combining the canvas element, a bit of JavaScript, and the OpenGL 3D drawing engine. OpenGL has been around for years, and you might know it because of its use in many popular desktop video games - if this project is a success, you could be playing 3D games in your browser.

WebGL isn't that far along, though, It's just started turning up in developer builds of Webkit -the engine behind Safari and Google Chrome - and isn't even enabled by default in the nightly builds yet. Webkit is just the first test, too. It's only one segment part of the market, that doesn't include IE and Firefox. For native 3D games to really take off on the web, they'd have to be supported for a much larger percentage of web users. Google, Mozilla and Opera are all on board for the WebGL working group, but Microsoft hasn't said anything. MS doesn't have a history of playing nicely with web standards, but they might be forced to offer some support if everyone else is doing it.

If you want to see WebGL in action, check out the video after the jump.

[via Slashdot]

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Tags: 3d, browsers, games, graphics, opengl, webgl, webkit

Filed under: Developer, Google, Mobile Minute, Android

Mobile Minute: A peek at the new Android Market

by Victor Agreda, Jr. Sep 4th 2009

Yesterday Android devs got a little treat in the form of a video demonstrating some new features in the upcoming Android Market, for version 1.6 of the Android platform. Hey, and guess what? It looks shockingly similar to the iTunes App Store as seen on your iPhone or iPod touch.

Similar as in it now has reviews and product shots IN the market ON your phone.

Oh, and subcategories and shiny big buttons to buy things and so on. Given the App Store's straightforward and logical design, it's only natural that the Android Market would end up looking pretty similar, isn't it? Check out the video for more.
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Filed under: Developer, Fun, Games, Microsoft, Open Source

Popfly is dead, long live Popfly

by Jay Hathaway Aug 28th 2009


Microsoft's Popfly, a place to create games and game mashups, closed down on August 24. Although all the site's users lost their accounts, Popfly is far from completely dead. Microsoft has open-sourced the code and put it up on CodePlex, free to be used by any aspiring game makers out there.

Of course, features that depend on the now-defunct site, like high scores, aren't included, but someone ambitious could host them in the future. On the Popfly page at CodePlex, the developers have left some suggestions for directions people could take with the code:
  • *Example code for a simple, general purpose Silverlight game engine
  • Create a Silverlight 3 scene / actor / behavior editor for the data format and make new games
  • Porting the engine to run your games on other platforms, like XBox 360 or Zune via XNA Game Studio or client PC via WPF
  • Building a copy of the game engine to use with your game data to post on your website.
  • Fix multi-actor collision resolution and make Lots O' Peas go faster!
  • Add new features like grid-based terrain, dialog trees, etc
I'm not sure how likely it is that any of this will actually get done, but there have to be some coders out there with time on their hands.


[via OStatic]

Tags: code, codeplex, developer, games, microsoft, popfly

Filed under: Developer, Mozilla, Browsers

Firefox learns some new accelerometer tricks

by Jay Hathaway Aug 26th 2009

You might be able to get more use out of your accelerometer. That little component that recognizes which way your device is tilted - you can find one in the Macbook Pro and the iPhone, amongst others - is getting some love from the Firefox developers at Mozilla, who have just added orientation support to the latest trunk build of Firefox. While it may seem like it should be far from a top priority for browser development, accelerometer support has a lot of potential, especially since it will eventually be available on Windows Mobile devices running Firefox's mobile version, Fennec.

Mozilla developer Doug Turner initially started building the orientation API because he was impressed by a Labyrinth game on the iPhone, where the player rolls a ball through a maze by tilting the phone. iPhone users already know that orientation support is great for gaming, but if it comes to Fennec on other devices that actually support Flash, we could see some amazing web-based accelerometer games. So far, however, the Macbook Pro is the only supported device.

[via MozillaLinks]

Tags: accelerometer, API, firefox, mozilla, orientation

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