I followed an excellent tutorial to first learn Objective C, then create an iPhone app that accesses the Address Book. Very simple stuff, but beautifully presented by Cocoa Dev Central and Apple's Developer Network. I've made available my code for other newbies.
Very excited about Blippy. Saw their tweet today, but within 3 minutes the invites had gone. When I arrived on the register page there were 4 left. By the time I entered my details, they'd gone.
The social media update is brilliant, but for me the original is still the best.
Just noticed a really cool Windows 7 feature. If you're running a video application, such as Media Player or WinTV, the icon that shows in the task switcher is animated. You can watch mini-TV while flicking between programs. This is of course almost completely useless, but very cool! The image below shows Terratec Home Cinema screening the Muppets Christmas Carol.
I've been playing with (formerly Intel's) Open Computer Vision API (OpenCV). Here are some notes I put together for building OpenCV apps in Visual Studio.
New project
Win32 Console application 'freqtest'
Delete existing sources
Copy files into freqtest project
Copy opencv_lib files into freqtest project
Right click 'Source files', add existing item, select all files from 'src'
Right click 'Header files', add existing item, select all files from 'include'
Right click 'freqtest', select Properties
Change output directory to '.\'
Select 'C/C++'
With Sidewiki, Google is opening up a new channel for user generated content (UGC). Users are empowered to comment on anything. I'm not sure if I'd want to see those comments all the time, but I know that it could help restore balance to one sided, biassed content. I'm really interested to see how Sidewiki interacts with highly branded content. The seller's marketing message can now be critiqued by anyone and those opinions shared in a truly egalitarian fashion.
Update 21/12/09: This is now sorted. See below for solution.
Ah, the agony of invisible Operating System behaviours! I noticed my browser experience slowing down. After running a gamut of tests, the cause seemed to be a slow ping time, but it didn't seem to affect all my computers. Ping times seemed fine until I ran Dropbox (v0.6.557) on Windows 7 (build 7600).
Ping to google.com
Reply from 66.102.9.105: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=54
Reply from 66.102.9.105: bytes=32 time=25ms TTL=54
Reply from 66.102.9.105: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=54
This would be funny were it not so extraordinarily insightful and accurate. Actually it's funny anyway.
See the cover on Google Images
Maira Kalman shows this brilliant New Yorker cover in her TED talk.
