May 2012
1 post
SFR Fibre Kaput
La #fibre #SFR est desservie par #FreeMobile ou quoi ?
— Melle Loup-Geekou (@Movegoo) May 5, 2012
My home Internet fiber connection is dead for 16 hours, and it took 15 hours for SFR to tweet about it through their @SFR_SAV account. I never really looked at a network status page for SFR but there is none. I wish any providers had something that simple for you to know about their current...
April 2012
4 posts
Valve New Employees Handbook →
A lot of buzz has been going online about this Valve New Employees Handbook, and I suggest you read it all, very informative.
… for the most part working overtime for extended periods indicates a fundamental failure in planning or communication. If this happens at Valve, it’s a sign that something needs to be reevaluated and corrected.
My (very limited) experience from San Francisco is...
Scaling Instagram: slides →
You might wanna read this, and the secrets to lightning fast mobile design.
Facebook buys Instagram →
I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.
Massive news.
Android Version of Instagram Gets 2,000 Signups a... →
Looks like Instagram is on the right track, Polaroid replacement?
March 2012
9 posts
Seventy years on and still hard to beat →
Take a look at these old pictures from the US Library of Congress. Note the skin tones, the colour balance, the tonal range, the clarity and the sharpness. And then consider that they were shot about seventy years ago. They’ve received a spot of post production before being uploaded to the web but the distinction with the average online gallery of today is stark.
Then compare with your iPhone4...
Sigma $6800 DSLR now available for $2299 →
Sigma released a DSLR for close to $10k, you actually bought it for $6,800, a year later the brand sets a new price: $2,299.
Sigma has now announced they will help out those who bought one of these SD1′s at full price
I’d be pissed.
Rumors: Leica with BW sensor, no LCD screen →
This is only a rumor but as Leica was asking a few photographers what we thought about it (years ago, the M9 wasn’t even real back then). Could be real.
How I am (and you should be) writing software
while feature_left?
new_test = add_a_test_for(new_feature)
if new_test.pass?
double_check_it_really_works
while new_test.fail?
fix_code
The pirate box: sharing files with friends →
Remember the good old days, demo parties with 1% of coder and 99% of leecher/warez/hackers etc? well now you can have your own pirate box. A hard drive, a linux wifi router, and you’re good to go.
AT&T: charging you $1 every time you've looked at...
The new iPad allows a much higher resolution, better for photos. At 2048x1536 resolution, a JPEG file weights about 4MB. Let’s see AT&T iPad plans:
250MB data: $14.99/month: 62 photos. That’s $1 spent every time you looked at 4 photos while being on 3G/4G.
3GB data: $30.00/month: 750 photos. That’s $1 spent per 25 photos.
5GB data: $50.00/month: 1250 photos. That’s...
How to flight with guns →
TSA spending 1 billion USD for making flight travelers less safe. This is amazing, must watch video.
Bottom line of the instapaper / readability story →
My RSS reader is full of stories about the release of readability on iPhone, and what it means for Instapaper and other services. Paul Haddad has a funny tweet about it:
OMG the service that used to pay people for their scraped content isn’t paying as much anymore, let’s switch to the service that never paid!
Does GitHub have a security issue? →
It seems so, as someone committed to the Rails master branch without privilege. Brrr.
February 2012
15 posts
Path client for MacOS available →
First unofficial Path client for Mac, MIT license (available on Github), coded during a hackathon in Singapore. Props to the developers and to Path.
Retina display Mac OSX laptops →
So, it seems Apple’s Messages App is already building in support for Retina displays on the Mac. Rumors have even suggested that we might see our first Retina Display Macs in 2012. One early report claimed Apple was working on a 2880x1800 MacBook Pro for the middle of this year.
Can’t wait to play with those Retina powered laptops.
Mail tool for Rails developers →
MailCatcher runs a super simple SMTP server which catches any message sent to it to display in a web interface. Run mailcatcher, set your favourite app to deliver to smtp://127.0.0.1:1025 instead of your default SMTP server, then check out http://127.0.0.1:1080 to see the mail that’s arrived so far.
Super nifty tool, easy to install too.
Color web tools →
It’s not about this catastrophic iPhone application, it’s about color tools on the web.
A weekly e-mail digest for programmers. →
Email isn’t dead after all.
Status Code is a language agnostic roundup of the latest ideas, releases, trends, events and must-read articles from the field of software development.
Sent every Wednesday by Peter Cooper.
The best (to come) iPhone dock gets lasering →
1.2 millions US dollars raised (1 million the last time I’ve checked, a few days ago) and getting custom lasering. Kickstarter really is a money raising whore.
Path2 contact upload issue follow up →
So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers.
Nice move.
Tweetbot available on iPad →
It was one of the first complain people had on Tweetbot for iPhone. Grab yours.
Boring default profile picture about to change →
Basecamp about to change that boring gray profile picture to something way more artsy. The funny thing is, I actually like it.
Forget your laptop password, go to jail. →
It appears that bad memory is now a federal offense.
Clever email marketing →
of course I still have to enter my credit card information before I can benefit from the free month.
Of course you do, but the email is nice. I can see some AB testing on those.
Bad behavior from a nice designed App →
Path uploads your full address book on their server, without asking or even warning you. Dave Morin (CEO) answered in the post saying they’ll change this, but my answer is:
It is important for services/companies to have as many email addresses in database as possible, whatever they are saying. It is worth a lot of money for them, for now or a later use (note: it also allows Path to tell you...
UIStoryboard Issues →
While working on this I found out you can’t have user defined relationships in StoryBoard. What a lack…
(Yes I had already blogged this link here)
Giving away the secrets of 99.3% email delivery →
A very very nice article from 37signals about email delivery. I had similar issues at Causes and worked on email for months, and I can confirm all points are good to know.
Images from the Fujifilm X-Pro 1 →
On one side Kodak files up for bankruptcy, and on the other Fuji releases a Leica M9 look a like camera, for 25% the price…
It looks super nice on video, might end up getting one.
January 2012
13 posts
FBI closes megaupload.com, DNS no more →
150 millions registered users, now 7 arrests and facing 20 years of jail.
Kodak files for bankruptcy →
It had been announced earlier these days, but it’s now official. Sad for the 130 year old company, and I’ll miss Portra films if I can’t find those anymore.
French FreeMobile: close to 1 million customer in... →
100,000 new customers per day, and 500k within the first days. Not bad for a new carrier…
(French article, via @jpoiraud)
Primary language in iTunes connect →
I used to create another iTunes developer account to change this. I had set my primary to French, meaning iTunes stores which I would not put specific description for my apps would see a French description instead of English.
How much they make from the Appstore? →
All in all, you can’t be serious about making games and “earning a living” out of it without at least a $40k budget. (And I’m really being cheap here; I think to be competitive today on the App Store you need $100k.)
Great article and a must read if you ever want to make iOS games, and even for other iOS developers.
What TV shows you watch ? →
They intercepted and manipulated the data using Fritzbox! and WireShark and returned to the company a negative energy consumption rate of -106610 kWh
Sounds like a good way to not pay electricity bills again ever (actually, you’d get money from the company). I love the CCC, you learn fun things every single year.
4 clicks to register for the Free mobile service →
Yesterday there were no way to subscribe for the new Free.fr mobile contract, but today I’ve done it successfully.
Entered my ADSL Free.fr username, they already had my address and bank informations. I clicked about 4 times and approved, done in less than a minute.
15.99 euros / month for unlimited data, tethering, usenet binaries, unlimited international calls. I’d pay more for an...
Free Mobile : All time records →
You probably know by now Free.fr released a 19.99 euros per month mobile contract, with unlimited data (hotspots included, you can even do usenet binaries…), voice calls with International calls to 40 countries, SMS, MMS, etc. But do you know they also broke all time records:
4.6 millions unique visitors on their live website (more than 2011 superbowl), and 450,000 simultaneous...
More Thunderbolt at CES11 →
Hard drives, Express Dock, and Thunderbolt in more laptops. Finally taking off…
The Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock will be available in September 2012.
Ah no, not really. Why so long? …
Shooting with the Nikon D4 →
For camera geek and photographers, the D4 is here.
this camera makes the reverential memories of Kodachrome 25 fade like an old color print.
Samsung inspired by Apple ads: same actor →
Samsung probably get lots of inspiration from Apple, but they now use the same actor for their ads, funny.
Convert your iPhone to Leica →
And if you want to check out the back.
Peepcode: Advanced Git →
Another great peepcode screencast, covering advanced Git usage. 60 minutes long.
December 2011
48 posts
Next iPhone name: simply iPhone →
After all, Apple doesn’t put the extra label on the back of the products. They simply say “iPhone” or “iPad.” Honestly, I think they need to lose the numbering scheme. They’re starting to resemble names like “Dell XPS” and “BMW X3 SAV.”
I agree the next iPhone could simply be “iPhone” and not iPhone 5 or iPhone 6. Same goes with iPad.
Artisanal Raw Denim →
Christopher J. Brown:
My goal is to offer an honest labor by hand and resurrect the practices of the formative years with American Denim. The two vital claims to the brand: no external marketing, hand crafted.
“He intends to only produce 100 pairs of denim per year and indeed this is how denim was produced in the early 1900′s”.
You can buy it here, however I just won the...
Recruiting programmers to your startup →
Post-traction companies can use the old numbers – you can’t. Your first two engineers? They’re just late founders. Treat them as such. Expect as much.
This is a quote from Naval Ravikant, and I know just too many people who should apply this to their project.
Peepcode: Backbone part III →
Backbone.js is a capable framework for building client-side applications. But even with method-by-method documentation, the details of how to actually build full-featured, useful applications can be elusive.
I add this one to my list.
Apology from Compiz Author →
Compiz was one of the software than impressed me so much on my Linux laptop (note: I don’t use Linux laptops anymore, I use Macbook Air with osx these days). It was an awesome addition to my window manager, with superb effects (rotation, etc).
Apparently it didn’t go too well since, as its author blogged an apology. Still, I wish I had it on my Mac…
Free Wi-Fi coming to japanese vending machines →
30 minutes free wifi, no purchase required. I love this idea.
Facebook: Write Once, Run Everywhere →
All of our developers are good at HTML. Only a few of them are really good at Objective-C and Android.
Don’t worry Facebook, we can tell.
A good review on the last years of Facebook development including the mobile part of it. To make it short, they go the Adobe way, write once, run everywhere (aka Flash). It’s very understandable from a corporate point of view, but very wrong...
28c3: Chaos Communication Congress →
Every year around Christmas / New year, and worth to go if you’re a geek, hacker, developer, and more.
The Chaos Communication Congress the annual four-day conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) in Berlin, Germany. First held in 1984, it has since established itself as “The European Hacker Conference” attracting a diverse audience of thousands of hackers, scientists, artists,...