something different

I did in fact fall off the face of the Earth, and just recently found my way back. I'm working on a review of the Balsamiq wireframing tool, and a book review for an iPhone development book from The Pragmatic Programmers (hint: it's good).

Give me a week and I'll have one of those two things posted. Promise.

Apple finally announced a ship date of August 28th for the newest release of its OS X operating system, named Snow Leopard.  It's not a typical release for Apple, forgoing loads of shiny new features and instead focusing on a number of improvements under the hood.  Here's a few of my favorites: 

1. Cisco VPN integration:  I know, I know.  It seems lame, but not having to deal with Cisco's clunky VPN client on the Mac is just so many shades of awesome. 
2. Microsoft Exchange support:  I find it more than a little humorous that Microsoft doesn't include this in its own operating systems.  Being able to hook in to Exchange for calendaring, contacts and email for no additional cost is great for individuals and even better for businesses.
3. Quicktime X:  No more will you be required to lay down the $30 for the "pro" features of Quicktime (editing, encoding, etc.).  Quicktime X brings a cleaner look and solid editing features.
4. Speed, baby:  I suppose this remains to be seen, but if everything performs as Apple claims, the performance improvements to the system are most welcome.
5. $29 Upgrade:  That's right.  All this goodness and more for a mere $29.  I suppose apple didn't feel right for charging the usual $180-ish for what amounts to a super duper service pack.  Folks that aren't running the most recent version of OS X, Leopard, will have to fork out $169 for the box set, which includes iLife and iWork in addition to the operating system.

For me, it isn't really any one feature that makes Snow Leopard worth the upgrade price.  Taken as a package, however, Snow Leopard really does remove some of the rough edges of Leopard and add in some future-looking features that will give developers a great foundation to build on.

Check out the Snow Leopard site for all the juicy details.

I've had a subscription to the MobileMe services for about a year now, primarily for the synchronization of my calendar and contacts between systems (iPhone, PC, laptop).  The email and photo gallery that are included aren't much use to me, so the $99/year cost was getting a bit hard to justify.  

Today Apple released a free application that might actually make the service worth the cost.  The MobileMe iDisk app for the iPhone gives you remote access to to all the files you store in the MobileMe iDisk service.  While the features of the app are limited, they reflect the typical focus that Apple gives its products.

What can you do with iDisk on the iPhone?  Basically, three things: 

• Download and view files on your iPhone.  You're restricted to file types that are supported by the iPhone OS, like PDF, Word, and Powerpoint.  Also, any file over 20 MB won't be available for download.
• View files in public folders of other MobileMe members.
• Share files and folders.  This, to me, is the biggest feature.  Emailing large files around is clunky and riddled with failure.  Try email a 30 MB PDF to a friend and see how often it just disappears into the ether.  With iDisk, you email a link to the file, with an optional expiration date and password protection. 

In my brief experience with the app, I was pleased with the result.  An 1 MB PDF downloaded in a little over 3G wireless and popped open in the native PDF viewer.  Honestly, I won't be reading long files on the iPhone, but it's great for quick reads and confirmation of document contents.

Sharing files was as simple as selecting a document, entering an email address, and hitting the send button.  Good stuff.

Will this app sell more MobileMe subscriptions?  Maybe.  Coupled with the new "Find My iPhone" feature that lets you track down and optionally erase the data on your phone, this could be a good value proposition for the service.  For me, getting my data when and where I want is worth it.

iDisk Main WindowDocument ListDownload a FileFile Sharing

Cheerios, originally uploaded by matthargus.

I remember when there were just Cheerios...

After a long day at work making the world a better place for the rest of mankind, I came home to my lovely wife and children to relax and digest the day.  While sitting in said home with said children and wife, my phone chirped cheerily to let me know that I had an email, as it does quite frequently.  I nonchalantly navigated to my messages and, after reading the note, was wondering why my phone was so bloody chipper about the whole deal.  You see, the message was from my electricity provider letting me know I owed $660.30 for the month of July.

My first rational thought was that the meter reader had been drinking heavily the morning he came by and had trouble making out those blurry little dials.  I mean, how could anyone use 4375 kwh in a month!!!  

After calming down somewhat and looking over my bills for the past year, I have determined the blame lies at least somewhat on my own shoulders.  Here's what I figured out: 

1. Death by autopilot:  As per my agreement with Spark Energy, I have my bill automatically paid from my checking account every month.  I don't regularly look at the details of my bill, and typically just look to see if the final number is somewhat sane.  If I had been looking, I would have noticed some issues with my statements over the last 12 months. I blame myself for not taking the time to review the monthly statements, and this is just once more points out the need for me to get organized.  
2. Customer service, customer schmervice: The first thing I noticed about my statement was that my per kilowatt hour rate was significantly higher than I expected ($.1457 vs $.115).  It turns out that my contract had ended and my service had been moved to a variable monthly rate.  In July.  Of 2008.  I was not aware of this and Spark Energy had made no significant attempts to enlighten me.  Now, I understand that they wouldn't be compelled to have me lock in at a lower rate, but I had hoped that some sort of human decency might have moved them to notify me that I was throwing hundreds of dollars out the window.  Sigh.
3. Shopping CAN save you money: After discovering my current rate, I decided to shop around a bit for a better deal if I couldn't work things out with Spark Energy.  Lo and behold, I found that I could get electricity on the cheap at a number of different providers.  Compare the $.095/kwh that I found to the $.1457/kwh that I was currently paying, and my $660 bill would have been $440.  Encouraging, but also enough to make me sick that just this month I had lost $220.  In one month.
4. Maybe there is something to this conservation stuff:  Even if I can save some major coin with a provider switch, I know there's room in our energy usage to trim off significant fat.  I've decided to drop $239.95 on a TED 5000 energy monitor in order to track down the vampires that are sucking me dry of both electricity and cash.  The TED 5000 will let you see at any given moment how much juice you're using, and will track over time your usage patterns.  My hope is to cut 30% to 40% off of our electric bills over the next year, more than paying for the device.  Oh, and I like gadgets, so there's that.TED 5000

Maybe I'm not ready to drop $30,000 on solar panels and drop off the grid, and I still harbor a deep suspicion of all those tofu-eating, Prius-driving, compost-making Yippies.  Still, they may be on to something with this energy conservation stuff, and I'm willing to hear them out.  Just keep that tofu out of my face.  Seriously.