Review of Mock up / wireframe applications on the iPad
Exports X-code

dapp $9.99 iPhone only
Interface HD $9.99

Stencils/Sketching only

AppLayout HD $3.99
iMockups
Omnigraffle
Sketchy
AppDesigner HD $0.99

(Please email me if you want your SDK included, or post a comment)

Airplay SDK
DragonFire SDK – provides a BuildCenter
WinChain (free)

Other interesting ones

Appcelerator Titanium WebKit wrapper (requires Mac?)
PhoneGap
Unity 3D

If you suspect an account has been locked out due to mistyped passwords, the account can be unlocked by going to a captcha page.
https://www.google.com/accounts/UnlockCaptcha
or Google Apps for Domain
https://www.google.com/a/[yourdomain]/accounts/UnlockCaptcha
e.g.
https://www.google.com/a/projectliftoff.com/UnlockCaptca

Microsoft managed to brick MSN Messenger rendering it not startable because the server sent corrupted configuration data to the client, which the client subsequently stores in the registry. I had to remotely dial in to my parent’s PC to fix this.
A fix for MSN Messenger crashing on start-up is here:

Start > Run > type “regedit” [...]

Download VS2010 project:
WcfComposition.zip
Sometimes, MSDN gives buggy information. If you are using Composition, there are a number of calisthenics required to make this thing work.

namespace WcfComposition.Web
{
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;
using System.Data;
using [...]

How do we test whether one date range intersects/overlaps another date range?
There are six possible combinations to consider.

entire date range falls outside of our specified range (too early)
date partially falls partially inside our range (start date out of range)
date range encompasses our range entirely
date falls entirely inside our range
date partially falls inside our range (end [...]

This article is reposted here
The MS Program manager need to watch some experienced developers new to SL try to develop a silverlight app. It’s painful. (I’ll put down how many hours I couldn’t bill due to these)

Use the browsers’ CultureInfo/locale info automatically. No code should have to be written. (0.5 hour)

LOB controls (DataGrid and DataForm) [...]

(If you have a problem, skip this and go straight to how to solve this)
My wife’s Aspire wouldn’t start up after 11 months of service.
The symptoms were:
BIOS errors with two beeps – 0221 Keyboard Error (Hit <F1> to continue)
Upon start up, the touchpad does not work.
When resuming from standby or hibernation, the keyboard freezes.
Acer support [...]

Looks like I’m being split tested by Wildfire. This is so exciting!

Patrick McKenzie (kalamazeus) has launched his second startup, a service as a website (SaaW) that organises appointment reminders through SMS, phones and postcards. It was a service that I was contemplating starting for the medical vertical in Australia. I hope he gets a lot of traction and shares his learnings as he did with the [...]

$ gcc -D HAVE_SRAND -D HAVE_RAND -D _MSC_VER=1200
-mno-cygwin -mdll -o rdiscount.dll
-I . -I C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/i386-mswin32/ *.c C:/Ruby/bin/msvcrt-ruby18.dll

<rant>
Here are the palette of options available to the Silverlight developer for client/server communication when I add “New Item” to my VS2008 project:

ADO.net Data Service
Authentication Domain Service
Domain Service
Silverlight Enabled WCF Service
Web Service

As a rule, I find that they all work in very limited profile combination. For instance, none of the WCF services supply the correct [...]

Looking through “An Introduction to Postscript” link, there is a section on Adobe’s history.
Adobe Systems formed was in 1982 with $2.5 million in initial backing.
It went public in August 1986.
Adobe has been profitable since day one.
Adobe does not manufacturer printers. It sesigns controllers and software and then licenses manufacturing rights to OEMs.
Originally, the [...]

This little factoid is only useful for people living in Toowoomba. We bought a trampoline for the kids today, and it was too big to fit in the car and we got a third party courier to deliver it.
Well, the delivery guy said I would have saved $10 if I had contacted him directly, instead [...]

Since I live in Australia, shipping books from Amazon can be a significant cost in addition to the book price. Therefore, I was attracted to a New Zealand e-tailer called Fishpond who offers an Amazon lowest price guarantee.
However, there was some fine print where it can end up being more expensive than purchasing from Amazon. [...]

Ever rebuilt a VB dll and find that it would no longer act as a drop-in replacement for an existing dll that has been released?
VB hides a lot of the complexity of COM implementation, and it can be rather difficult to track down how far back when binary compatibility was broken.
One way to tackle this [...]

Interesting study commisioned by Google on SMB buying behaviours for IT products. In order of importance:

Reliable 73%
Integrates easily with existing systems
Service/support
Appropriate for a company of my size
Flexible  44%
Inexpensive to service/ maintain
Lower cost 37%
Requires minimal training/ education
Company is a well-known, established brand
Scalable
Includes comprehensive training/education
Discounts/promotions
Have purchased from company in the past 27 %

There has been a lot of commentary written about News Corp playing with the idea of exiting Google’s search index. Cringely said that News Corp would be denying themselves valuable traffic, handing them to competitors. Mark Cuban, on the other wrote that Twitter is heading to be THE news search site, leaving Google News has [...]

I don’t know if you recall this article from the New Scientist discussing whether obesity is spreading through social norms.
However, there may be another pathway.
A 2007 Scientific American article mentions that bacteria can cause subjects to gain weight faster.
For one thing, bacteria produce chemicals that help us harness energy and nutrients from our food, Huffnagle [...]

Over the term 3 school holidays, we (my family) spent 11 days travelling in Japan, and I’d like to share some observations.

Osteoporosis is common among the elderly, far more prevalent than Australia for example. Despite the (relatively) higher consumption of soy products in Japan, this comes across as a little surprising
People are generally taller in [...]