Six Word Stories: Cliffs

Posted on March 6, 2010 by MXH

“Let’s ride atop the cliffs. Again.”

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UIScrollView

Posted on March 5, 2010 by MXH

I found the basic operation of UIScrollViews to be a little perplexing; it wasn’t obvious to me how to get a simple test case up and running. Therefore, I thought it might be useful to share such a test case with you.

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Six Word Stories: De Gaulle

Posted on March 4, 2010 by MXH

The graveyards filled with indispensable men.

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iKnowPeople v2.0

Posted on March 2, 2010 by MXH

App IconI’m pleased to announce that AAPL has approved v2.0 of my iKnowPeople application, and that it’s now available on the iTunes store. This version includes some minor UI tweaks, the ability to create contacts from your address book, a spiffy new icon, and Full-Text Search, which I may have mentioned once or twice.

I word about the new icon: I got it through 99designs, and I couldn’t be happier with their service. A fellow going by the handle “surmise” submitted the winning design.

Since I’ve released a new version, I have new promo codes. If you’d like to try this app for free, please send an e-mail to iknowpeople@fairoakslabs.com, and I’ll send you a code. (While supplies last.)

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Paranoia

Posted on March 1, 2010 by MXH

Two people with two messages – different words, but the music is the same. And it’s creepy, conspiratorial music.

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First Impressions

Posted on February 28, 2010 by MXH

Mark Twain famously wrote:

Give a man a reputation as an early riser, and that man can sleep till noon.

Which, if you can get the former, is all well and good. But what if you’re unlucky, and have to deal with an unfavorable reputation? I would suggest that not only is it futile to argue about it, it’s not even productive to try to disprove it through action.

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Six Word Stories: Manual

Posted on February 27, 2010 by MXH

Frustrated, Tom finally read the manual.

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Keeping the User Waiting

Posted on February 26, 2010 by MXH

In a perfect world, we could create software that gave instant responses to user input. Unfortunately, this is not always feasible; some things take time, and so we have to keep the user waiting. There are some broadly-accepted conventions as to how to do this politely:

  • Give the user an idea of how long the process will take
  • Display an indicator that work is ongoing
  • Provide updates on the computation’s progress
  • Do not block (as much as possible) the function of UI elements
  • Allow the user to cancel the computation (if feasible)

Today, I’d like to present some tips on how to follow these conventions on the iPhone.

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Cost Containment

Posted on February 25, 2010 by MXH

From Arnold Kling, via The Corner:

There are two ways to approach reducing the use of high-cost, low-benefit procedures. You can have the government tell people what they can and cannot have. Or you can have individuals pay for a larger fraction of the medical procedures that they consume. It really comes down to those choices.

Let’s assume that Kling is correct, and that this is an exhaustive list of choices, and that “something must be done”. Which choice would you prefer to implement? (I think that’s an interesting and potentially revealing question.)

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The Big Con: Chapter 5

Posted on February 24, 2010 by MXH

Chapter 5 of David Maurer’s “The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man” (TBC) consists of a discussion of “The Mob”. This chapter describes the internal organization (such as it was) of a big-con mob in the early 1900’s. It includes some interesting information on the financial arrangements of such a mob, as well as some insights into the highly specialized nature of con men.

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