Slide to reload

I love Tweetie2′s slide to reload feature.

Maybe one day I will use a similar device, fortunately Dr. Touch has an example.

iPhone Mutex/Sempahore

Looking for Mutex and Semaphore in the iPhone SDK?  The classes you want are NSLock and NSConditionLock.  You can use NSConditionLock just like a semaphore.

Here’s a good NSConditionLock example

For Mutex’s, use @synchronized(self), or another NSLock object.

How to make pull to reload tableview like Tweetie 2

I really like this feature in Tweetie 2, very innovative. Well if you ever need to do something similar, you can. Here’s how

GMail Labs features you should enable

I highly recommend checking out the GMail labs features, Settings -> Labs.  Got some useful ones in there.

Default ‘Reply to all’ – changes default reply action to ‘Reply All’

Title Tweaks – re-orders the title

Inserting images – embed images into a post (useful, but a little buggy)

Forgotten Attachment Detector – reminds you to attach files

SVN – partial checkouts

I have a project setup like this:

trunk/Project1
trunk/Project2

I wanted to add a common library to both projects.  Turns out there is a really nice way of doing this.

Add the library to trunk/Library

Then do a selective checkout.  Simply check out the trunk using --depth=empty (docs).  Then in this directory (which is a working copy with a .svn), you “svn update” the various directories you do want.  In this case, ‘svn update Library’ and ‘svn update Project1′.  You now have a perfectly valid, single working copy with just the libraries you need.

SVN also now has relative externs (since 1.5) so you could extern to ../Library which then still plays nice when you branch the trunk.  Only catch – it’s still an extern which requires separate committing and merging.  Less than ideal.  Still is it a hell of a lot better than absolute externs which require updating every time you branch as well.  I went with the partial checkout solution above, I think it’s neater, but it is nice to have the choice now.

Like This App? Rate it…

MobileOrchard has some great ideas regarding fighting the negative App-Store bias (caused by the ‘rate on delete’ feature).

I tweaked their code a little, localising it, and making it ask a second time if the user clicks ‘No Thanks’ the first time (in case they were simply busy).

My advice would be to make sure you put the dialog in a place where the user isn’t busy doing this.  For GPS Log I don’t ask this immediately on launch, as most people launch when the need to log a location, and rating an app is the last thing on your mind.  Instead I ask it after the user shares some entries. I figure at this point they’re just at home, or somewhere relaxing. I only show it to people who have bought the software too…

This guy has some tips on getting the review URL.

Basically it boilds down to this:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewContentsUserReviews?id=30000000&pageNumber=0&sortOrdering=1&type=Purple+Software&mt=8

Where 30000000 is your App ID.

I have no idea what ‘Purple+Software’ is, but trying to replace it didn’t seem to help… so I just left it in.

Update (2011-01-15)
More info on iTunes links can be found here.

An alternative format for the review links (which I have not tested) is:
itms-apps://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewContentsUserReviews?type=Purple+Software&id=337064413

Promo code links can also be created – what a great idea!
e.g. https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/freeProductCodeWizard?code=RWAPJ7XLTHN7

Conroy wants Google to sensor YouTube for Australia like they do China

Wake up Australia.  Internet censorship comparisons between China and Australia are no longer just interesting comparisons. Your communication minister is actually involking China’s policies to help try and get what he wants.

Read this Sydney Morning Herald article.

“Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government; they filter an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Thai government.”

Google Australia’s head of policy, Iarla Flynn, said the company had a bias in favour of freedom of expression in everything it did and Conroy’s comparisons between how Australia and China deal with access to information were not “helpful or relevant”.

Google continues:

“The scope of RC is simply too broad and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information. RC includes the grey realms of material instructing in any crime from [painting] graffiti to politically controversial crimes such as euthanasia, and exposing these topics to public debate is vital for democracy.”

CORE weighs in on the fact that the filter doesn’t actually do what it’s meant to do anyway:

This week the Computer Research and Education Association (CORE) put out a statement on behalf of all Australasian computer science lecturers and professors opposing the government’s internet filtering policy.

They said the filters would only block a fraction of the unwanted material available on the internet, be inapplicable to many of the current methods of online content distribution and create a false sense of security for parents.

CORE said the blacklist could be used by current and future governments to restrict freedom of speech, while those determined to get around the filters and access nasty content could do so with ease.

I just donated some money to GetUp to help spread the word on this issue.  You can too.