David Alison's Blog

It’s been a long time since I blogged, mainly because I’ve been so busy building up another product for public release. Now that the product is launched I’m hoping to spend a little more time covering technology topics. I figured what better way to restart the blogging than by writing about our new product. The Problem with Contact Lists Today nearly everyone carries a smart phone. Whether it’s a company issued phone or (more likely) a personal device, it’s hard to go anywhere and not find them. When you need to get in touch with someone you work with, the best way is usually to call or text their mobile phone if they aren't nearby. Sometimes it's a quick email from your smartphone if the message isn't urgent. This is where the problems begin. Getting the people you work with onto your phone is largely up to each individual. Unless the company they work for has an Active Directory or LDAP server humming away—and it's been updated with everyones person mobile devic...

I patiently waited for the actual release of iOS5 - since I can't get myself an iPhone 4S for a little while without paying a premium. When I saw that iOS5 was available, I decided to update my 32GB iPhone 4 to the latest and greatest. First off, Apple wanted me to upgrade OS X to 10.7.2 and iTunes to 10.5. That took the better part of an hour in itself, between downloading a pretty hefty collection of bits, installing them and then running a subsequent back up, I was a full hour in before I could even begin to upgrade my iPhone. Once that was out of the way I tried updating the iPhone 4. Here's where the fun began. First, an error After sitting there for a very long time—I didn't pay close attention—iTunes reported this little error. Not good. When I clicked OK (it's not really OK but that's the one to push), I pulled my iPhone off the USB connector and the phone itself seemed fine. Still running iOS 4.3, and all of my content was sitting there fine. I Goo...

By the beginning of 2009 I realized that something needed to be done. We had just returned from a fantastic trip to Jamaica with the entire family, staying at an all-inclusive resort. All-inclusive is code for “eat and drink everything in sight”, and I heartily did just that. As I reviewed the pictures taken during the trip I was shocked to see how much weight I’d put on over the years. At 45 years old my steady diet of junk food and extremely half-hearted attempts at exercise had converted my body into an awkward pear shape. A professional career of driving a computer everyday meant ready access to snacks and little natural exercise other than pounding away on a keyboard. My fingers were as lean and nimble as ever but that’s where the good news ended. The stats weren’t pretty: at 5’11” I weighed in at 206lbs, solidly into the overweight category. I wasn’t sleeping well because I snored loudly and suffered from mild nighttime apnea ; after lunch I nearly always needed (though didn’t ge...

My wife and I were going through our morning routine, eating breakfast and reading the newspaper when suddenly she said "I can't believe Apple!". We share many core beliefs—especially on politics—so I usually give her a nod, offer a "Yup" and continue reading my section. Me: "What about Apple?" Wife: "They have a shaking baby iPhone application !!! This is outrageous!" Me: "Honey, Apple didn't make that application." Wife: "Well they had it in the App Store. That's just stupid." I completely understand that Apple is generating some significant revenue from their App Store sales and that it has become a major part of their strategy moving forward. The problem as I see it is that Apple is putting itself in a very precarious position. Instead of just worrying about whether or not the application will break an iPhone, chew up resources, etc. Apple now has to worry about the content. The problem as I see it is two-fold:...

I've always been a big fan of iStat menus , the freeware system monitoring utility. It's a great way to quickly see what's going on with my Mac, whether it's CPU, disk or memory utilization, temperature, etc. Bjango , the iPhone side of iSlayer (producers of iStat menus), has recently released iStat Server , a free Mac application that runs in the background. It sends your Mac's system monitoring information to your iPhone for actual monitoring. On the iPhone side you buy the $1.99 iStat - System Monitoring application , which then connects with your Mac and displays your monitoring information on your iPhone. If you want to remotely monitor one or more of your Macs for the ridiculously affordable price of $2 then this is a very cool set up. The first step is to download and install iStat Server on any of the Macs you want to monitor. Once installed and running you will get the main iStat Server window: It will display a code that you will need to enter on your iP...

One of the cooler aspects of writing this blog has been the people that have come around to not only give advice but tell me about some of the cool stuff they are working on. Hendrik Kueck has been commenting on this blog for a long time now. Hendrik is a software developer and when he told me about an iPhone application he was working on I became very interested in checking it out. His product, Juxtaposer , is a fun little application for mashing two pictures together quickly and easily. Hendrik has done an outstanding job creating an easy to use interface, one that feels very natural for the task. You can take a picture directly with the camera and start mashing away or you can grab a photo from your library. Basically you set a base image and a top image, then start hacking away at the top image. The tools included are very basic but are perfect for doing the task at hand. It literally takes a minutes or two to put together images. If for example you wanted to see what your brother ...

Though I received a screen protector with my dermaSHOT case it recently became a bit scratched up and got a couple of small nicks in it. I figured screen protectors are kind of disposable so I went out to my local BestBuy to see what they had in stock. I looked at a couple of different products but one jumped out at me: the ZAGG invisibleSHIELD . There was only a single shield in the little box, unlike a competitor that had 5 shields in it, but it came with a lifetime warranty. Reading through the information on the box it looked like it was worth a try. The invisibleSHIELD claims to be made from the same material designed to protect the leading edge of helicopter blades. The material itself is very durable and reminds me of the invisible car masks applied to the front of cars. I figured that anything designed to withstand supersonic gravel pelting would probably be overkill on my little iPhone but that's fine. Turns out the invisibleSHIELD is rather difficult to apply. First off, ...

I've now had my 3G iPhone for just over a month. It has become my constant companion, even though my use of it as a phone is relatively light. I'm one of those people that has to have a phone handy, a habit I picked up from a decade of being deeply involved in the operation of an online service that had to be running 24x7. The Good I've found that nearly every day I'm using more and more features on the phone. I use the Notes feature like crazy now, jotting down shopping lists and thoughts. The e-mail capability on the iPhone is wonderful. I've adapted to the keyboard pretty well, though I'm using only my right index finger to do all the work. I wouldn't want to write a blog entry with it but quickly responding to e-mails and text messages are a piece of cake. Browsing the web on an iPhone is fantastic, especially with a Wi-Fi connection. It will render virtually any Flash-less site and do it accurately. Some of the more complex sites can take a little while...

I'm now just past the six month mark since tentatively purchasing my first Mac and beginning to switch away from Windows. At the time I bought my MacBook I had a number of machines in the house, all running either Windows or Ubuntu. What I've tried to do on this blog is provide a kind of running commentary on switching, hitting on some of the challenges I've encountered, the native Mac applications I've found and the general feelings I've had about making the switch. What I find interesting after 6 months is the impact buying that little MacBook had not only on the way I handle my personal computing but to a large degree the influence it has had on the way I do my development work. You see after I bought the MacBook I found myself doing more and more with it. I had a Windows XP development / gaming rig parked directly in front of me but I was constantly sliding my hands over to the MacBook. My entire development platform—at the time Visual Studio—was completely set...

As I get older I find myself forgetting things that I really should remember and remembering details that I wish would simply clear from my brain's cache to make room for more useful data. I can still recall the phone number from my childhood home, yet remembering the unique PIN number my cable provider wants me to give them before I talk to a human working there is well beyond my grasp, even a day after I make one up. Life is complicated enough without someone else badgering me for yet another new security PIN or password, each with it's own unique set of requirements. 6 characters? How about 8-14? Must have a non-alpha character, must not. Can't be longer than 8 characters. Case sensitive. Must be mixed case. Enough already! I manage an increasingly large portion of my life online or on the phone so this is a big deal. What's a person to do? There are a couple of no-cost solutions. Some people use the same password for everything. You come up with some nice, safe pass...

I've had my iPhone for a little over a week now and figure it's a good time to settle in and talk about what I like and dislike about it. I have not really changed my calling habits too much as a result of having the iPhone; the way I use the phone in general is about the same as I've done in the past. Where it has changed my daily activities is in the additional stuff I can use it for outside of being a simple phone. No longer do I get stressed out about having to waste time standing in line or sitting in an airport terminal waiting for a family member's flight to arrive. I simply whip out the iPhone and check my e-mail or hit the Newsgator mobile site to see if there are any new developments on my Washington Redskins . I haven't tried the full iPhone version because I've been so pleased with the web based model. I love the Safari web browser built into the iPhone. Other than Flash sites everything I've pulled up renders great and is readable easily by zo...

I've mentioned before that my lovely wife of 22 years is both brilliant and technically challenged. Whenever there is the slightest problem with technology—whether it's switching the inputs on our TV or dealing with the smallest of issues on her Windows XP machine—I hear the "David...!" yell. This has led me to consider getting my wife a Mac to replace the HP laptop she has used for a couple of years now. I would love to get her on the same platform that I'm on and get her to enjoy the Mac experience I have had so much fun with. I'm also a realist and came to the conclusion months ago that she will simply not enjoy the switch to a Mac unless it was something she really wanted. It's not that she's anti-Apple; she has been an iPod user for years and loves them. It's just that unlike me her computer is purely a utility, something that is used to accomplish her goals. Given that, a Mac would likely be a challenge for her because it is just different e...

There are a couple of things I've noticed about the iPhone 3G that I didn't mention in my original post that I would like to cover. First off, the iPhone comes with what look at first glance like standard earbuds. I simply ignored them since they looked like the little white earbuds that I received with every other iPod I own. These earbuds are different though. They include a little microphone 5 inches below the right earbud, harking back to the wired headsets that were popular before Bluetooth headsets became all the rage. You can use the them to listen to your music and it produces very serviceable sound. The best part though is when you use it for a phone call; the sound is loud, crystal clear and comes into both ears, something I rarely experience with a phone since I tend to use single ear headsets or just press the handset up to my ear. The other cool feature is that the little microphone is also a switch that can be used while playing music. A single click pauses the cu...

Last week the proverbial last straw was placed on my back by Sprint. Though they have tried like crazy to retain my business over the years and I still had 4 phones under contract I had had enough. At our home on the Eastern Shore of Delaware our signal had been deteriorating for many months, to the point where you could only maintain a phone call for 15-20 seconds. People would call, you'd look at the phone and see two bars, start to talk and POOF! The call would fail mid-sentence. Fan-flippin-tastic. Five different phones, all got the same result. I called Sprint to complain. The first person I spoke to told me that he would be happy to give me additional minutes on my account to compensate for the problem. Though a nice gesture, I declined because the phones were basically useless unless you liked to carry on Twitter like conversations with everyone. He suggested I speak to someone in the technical support group and transferred me over there. After a lengthy hold a nice guy from...

My nephew Dan—a Computer Science major at the University of Washington—is interning with me this summer. He gets an education in what it's like to create a start-up from scratch and I get a really bright young resource for a low weekly rate. I've known Dan his entire life and he's an exceptional young man. He and I get along extremely well and I've been looking forward to helping him learn the ins and outs of starting up a software business. There's just one catch; Dan is a hardcore Windows guy. We're building our product in Ruby on Rails so this isn't really a big issue. He's using an HP laptop running Vista and I'm using my Mac Pro and MacBook Pro. Needless to say a lot of good natured ribbing goes on between the two of us as I continually tell him how easy things are on my Macs. A New Hope It was then that I found out that Dan really wanted to get an iPhone. Many of his friends at school have them and he was thoroughly impressed with them. Though ...