I’m so going to blog this!

I’d love to see some good visualizations of my social graph.  Google’s recently released Social Graph API makes that look a little bit easier.

Specifically, I’d like to put in my blog address or my openid and see what shows up.  An actual graph would be a great way to visualize this.

That’s definitely going to become one of my pet mini-projects once I actually get off my tuchus and take the time to do it.

I’d like to throw together a quick paper prototype, but in the interest of getting the idea out there quickly I’m going to post this and get back to you on that.

Seriously.

I totally mean it.  I’ll definitely do something with this.

Don’t look at me like that.  I’ll get to it.

Eventually.

——

Please hold me to that.

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Couple more features for the wifi-finder app I’d like to see:

• Submitting new wifi locations should not require the user to log in.  That’s just obnoxious.  Maybe use captcha or something to prevent bots (although I have no idea why bots would be interested)
• Fail! button for wifi that either sucks or doesn’t actually exist
  • This may end up being more a vote-down button instead of a straight up banning
  • Potentially, this could be abused or become a source of griefing
• Win! button to vote up a network if it’sawesome
• A way to note if you need to ask the proprietor for the network password
  • possibly even store those passwords

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So following up on App Idea: Finding WiFi on my iPhone, there is one app that I’ve found for the iPhone: iphone.jiwire.com

It’s a pretty hot little app. My quick thoughts:

What I like about it:

• Slick, tight, readable, i-friendly interface.
• It remembers my search inputs. (Default Safari forms)
• Small result pages that load quickly.
• Let’s me search for only free networks if I choose.

What I don’t like:

• It doesn’t remember my search results.
• I can’t search for where I am based on intersection or anything.
• Results are localized to a zip code which ends up with pretty broad results.
• It’ll launch the maps application but it take a few too many clicks, and I’d rather have it in the same app.  Hitting google map’s static api wouldn’t be too hard.
• The interface is light, but paginated in a traditional way that doesn’t really take advantage of the iPhone’s particular interface options.  I’m thinking here of the way that the google reader web app gives you the “load more” option for a long list
• No user input.  What if I find a new network and want to find it again later? There’s no way for me to submit it.

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So, I’m walking through the city and I have a couple of hours to kill.  I’d like to mess around on the net and my 3G iPhone just isn’t cutting it.  I want to break out my laptop.

But where is the wifi?  I mean real wifi.  There are plenty of sites out there for finding it, but there’s problems with these sites:

• they’re unoptimized for mobile use - Fairly heavy websites, slow, javascript-heavy
• they’re not terribly iPhone-friendly layouts
• some require login

I want the iSepta of wifi-finding.

I want to:

1. Find out where I am.
2. Find the wifi.
3. Get a map.
4. Go there.

And I want to do it on my iPhone. Who wants to build it with me?

[Follow-up]

—–

Notes:

Here are the sites I’ve been looking at:
http://www.ilovefreewifi.com/
http://www.wififreespot.com/pa.html
http://www.wifinder.com/advanced/results/state/Pennsylvania/1/0/0/0/html/
http://www.technewsworld.com/hotspot-locator/
http://www.openwifispots.com/

Please let me know if you’ve seen solutions to this problem.  It’s not a rocket-surgery idea, so I’m sure other people are working on it.

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My buddy JR had this idea for an iPhone app that I really like.  It’s called Laundry Time!

Problem:

1. You live in an apartment/dorm/house where the washer & dryer are out of earshot.
2. Your washer & dryer take different amounts of time to finish.
3. You’re really forgetful like me.

Solution:

You open up your Laundry Time! application on your iPhone and set the two alarms.  They take different amounts of time, so you get two different dials/time-setter-thingers and since you don’t necessarily start them at the same time, you can start one and then start the other later if necessary.  Or, if you’re like me, you can start them both at the same time since I like to get these things done in one fell swoop.

——-

As with all app ideas, if you like it, comment!  If you hate it, comment! If you want to work on it with me, comment!

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Recently I tweeted an idea which seemed to resonate with a lot of the developers I know:

“Note to developers: Don’t keep your ideas to yourself. Even if you’re not ready to do them.”

I’ve realized that a lot of folks (developers, designers, “product”-folks, whatever) are hiding their ideas. We all do it. You have some brilliant idea out one night at a pub. Or in the shower. Or wherever it is. And maybe you jot it down on a stickie somewhere. Or maybe you’ll actually do something with it.

Probably not, though. But not because you’re lazy. Well, maybe you are, but maybe you’re not sure it’s a good enough idea. Maybe you don’t have the skills right now to do it, but you will some day. Maybe you just don’t have the time. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

A big one for most people is that they don’t want their precious, original idea to get away from them. They don’t want someone else to do it before they do.

Knock it off. Stop hiding your ideas.

Not sure if your idea is good enough or just a flop? Share it. You might actually get some good advice.

Think your idea sucks? Share it. No one remembers the so-so ideas. Everyone remembers the killer apps. So just get it out there. You might actually have the next big thing, or maybe it’s the part that was missing from the next big thing. Or not. And then who cares? But you gave it a shot.

Don’t have the skills to really execute the way you want to? Share it. If the idea has legs someone with the skills will probably approach you about working on it. Better to work with someone now to make your idea happen then to wait years and have nothing.

Don’t have the time? Shar… well, you get the idea.

Lastly, for those of you who are sitting on that one big idea that’s going to make you millions of dollars, but you’re worried someone will steal your incredible idea? Don’t worry, they already have.

Not that you’re not brilliant. I’m sure you totally are. But there are a lot of other brilliant people out there having ideas. It’s the folks that share their ideas and start getting other people involved that are most likely to actually make something out of it.

Share your damn idea. Those days of operating in a vacuum are over. I’m also not entirely sure they were ever really there. Most of the time it’s just luck whether your idea is the right thing at the right time. But if you never make it, you’ll never know. If you share it, you might actually make it.

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On Nov 29th, Adobe announced on their labs site that they are starting a pilot program for serving Yahoo! ads through PDFs.

What does this mean for the small press PDF market?

For authors who self-publish their content through PDFs and distribute through online stores, this could represent a new revenue stream.  While I’m not heavily involved with the online publishing scene, I am interested in the way that digital media on the web changes the way we make art and make a living at it.

Link out: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/labs/archives/2007/11/ads_for_adobe_p.cfm

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Actually I just want to see what this does with a YouTube Video. Plus I like ‘Good Eats’ and coffee.

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So I was working on some docs for our cross-project library and ASDoc started giving me issues. It was throwing a Definition could not be found error on a class I know existed. It looked something like:

"path/to/your/imported/Class.as (5): Error: Definition path.to.your.imported:Class could not be found" and ceases operation.

However, I know that my imported class was definitely available. Turns out this is a bug in ASDoc. It looks like ASDoc throws this error if the imported class is never actually used with in the class it was parsing.

Please vote for the bug in the Adobe Bug system: https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-13284

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Quick Fix:
Problem: ASDocs creation on an AIR app.
Error: The definition of base class WindowedApplication was not found.

Quick Solution:
The SWC you’re looking for is in here:
[WHEREVER YOUR SDK IS]/framewoks/libs/air

The long winded version:

So, I’m putting together an AIR app and I says to myself:
“Self…”
“What?”
“Well, why don’t we output some ASDocs for our spiffy new AIR application.”

So I put together a quick ant file and ran it.

And I got this error:

[exec] Error: The definition of base class WindowedApplication was not found.
[exec]    public class MyApp extends WindowedApplication
[exec]                                          ^

Now I could regale you with my adventures in finding out where the heck the AIR classes library was stored, but today I’ll spare you anymore rambling and just tell you.

[WHEREVER YOUR SDK IS]/framewoks/libs/air

Right where you expect it to be.

Where you should’ve looked before you went bumbling around the Intarwebs trying to find it.

What I ended up with:

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