Adventures with Appcelerator

Technology

Appcelerator

I developed my first mobile app prototype using Jquery Mobile (http://jquerymobile.com/) after spending lots of time reading threads about building webforms vs native mobile apps. Since the app is basically a mobile interface to my company’s server side business management system, webforms seemed to be the way to go.

Grab an iPhone or Droid and to go this URL from your browser to see my first attempt at it here: (http://mobile.dockmaster.com). The great thing about JQuery Mobile is that it was built in HTML5 and CSS3 from the ground up to be touch/swipe enabled as opposed to point/click. It also renders to different form factors from iPad (largest) to Blackberry (smallest). The problem (for me) was load times. I found that it worked great on my new iPhone 4S but load times are a dog on older devices (e.g. iPhone 3G).

So after attending the Launch Pad conference in CA that Jason Calacanis organized and after speaking with a number of top app developers, I decided to install Titanium (Appcelerator). Appcelerator is basically a customized version of Eclipse. I installed it on a Windows machine (because that’s all I have at the moment) and started messing with the Andriod SDK. I will be loading on MacOS over the Holidays.

Installing on Windows has some known configuration issues that took me days to figure out. NOTE: I am using it on Windows XP, haven’t tried on Windows 7 yet.Read these threads and save yourself a shit-pile of time if you use Windows:

FIRST check out: http://developer.appcelerator.com/doc/mobile/mobile-build-windows (You don’t have to install Python and Git but it’s highly recommended. I personally love Git. I keep all my Dev stuff in GitHub.com. Also, having “Git Bash” allows you to use Unix commands in Windows!)

Problem #1: Appcelerator and more specifically the Android SDK has trouble with the Windows file system. It doesn’t take kindly to spaces.  The SDK typically gets installed in “Program Files”. This path name must be converted to “PROGRA~1”.http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6638713/android-emulator-is-not-…

Problem #2: Emulator couldn’t find path to SDCard. This may or may not happen to you. But if it does here’s how to fix it. http://developer.appcelerator.com/question/124530/how-do-i-manually…

Lastly – Tim Poulsen at Titanium is a good resource.http://developer.appcelerator.com/question/112621/adb-devices-retur…

My iTunes Saga – A happy ending

Music

After a few more email back and forth with Apple iTunes Support (which only seem to be available during working hours in India) I was able to resolve the iTunes issue I had with the missing songs. A gentleman named Naresh in Apple’s Support Group actually replaced the songs diredctly into my account.

Thank you Apple for resolving this. Here is the email thread:

Dear Cam,

You're very welcome. I'm glad to hear that we could help.

Nothing makes Apple happier than to hear that we have pleased our customers. I hope that you continue to enjoy the iTunes Store.

Have a nice day!!

Sincerely,

Jones
iTunes Store/Mac App Store Customer Support

Please Note:I work from Tuesday to Saturday, 07:00 AM - 04:00 PM CST.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an Applecare survey email; any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated.

Surya,

Yes - I noticed that the songs were reposted yesterday. So there was no need for me to download them afterall,

Please let Naresh know that I appreciate his efforts. Also please resubmit a customer survey so I can provide a positive comment.

Thanks,

Cam

My favorite iPad apps

Technology

Like most people I enjoy games and fun apps on the iPad. But to me the iPad is more than just a toy or entertainment console. I seek out business apps that help me be more efficient and stay connected. These are the iPad apps that I use almost daily to run my business and my daily life. I have not included the “base” apps like Email, Calendar, Safari and Contacts. Those are the staples. (Note: Some are fun apps. All work and no play makes Cam a dull boy).
 
notetakerpagesevernotedropboxgoodreadergotomeetingyelprealizertextasticetude

 

 

 

 


NoteTaker HD – I credit this app with moving the needle for me on the iPad from “toy” to “essential”. I have since discovered many more great apps, but this app replaced all of my random notes, notebooks and scraps of paper I used to keep track of my life.

Pages – This is the iPad version of Apple’s desktop Pages document processor. Elegant and easy to use. Had some trouble at first making the transition from being an MS-Word user to Pages, but Mac users will have no problem.

Evernote – I use Evernote on my PC constantly, so having it now on my iPad made me that much more efficient. Some limitations compared to the PC version, like being able to “Evernote” a page directly from Safari.

Dropbox – This tool also has become my family’s defacto insurance policy. We use Dropbox on both our Windows and Ubuntu laptops, as well as our iPhones and my iPad. Its just works!

GoodReader – A great general purpose file reader that can be launched from many applications. I use it a lot on conjunction with Dropbox when I want to read and or email a document.

GoToMeeting – We use GoToMeeting in my company all the time for sales presentations, conference call with partners and for basic training. Their iPad app is a great extension of a valuable service.

Yelp – I am new to Yelp but I have found it extremely useful while on the road.

Realizer – Just started using Realizer to take schematics that I create in NoteTaker HD and make them come alive. It’s a great prototyping tool to help me conceptulize an app prior to writing the first line of HTML or CSS.

Textastic Code Editor – Kind of a geek tool, but it allows me to edit any text file while on the road. If I have to make a hot fix to a website or even write some code (in a limited fashion) I could. Still haven’t found an FTP product I really like though. Will Eclipse ever be avail for the iPad?

Steinway Etude – An iPad app from a 150-year old company? You bet! This app allows people to learn piano pieces that they download from their libary of “sheet music”. It’s a good user interface and an ingenious idea based off of the Kindle model.

Tangled up with Apple iTunes Tech Support

Music, Popular

itunesI upgraded my iPhone, iPad and copy of iTunes to the latest version recommended by Apple. The iTunes version is now 10.5. The problem is that a number of my songs were missing. This seems to be a recurring problem when you have an external drive and the link between iTunes and the physical media is broken. I went in and manually fixed about 100 songs.

I noticed that a number of my purcahses didn’t show up either. Again, no worries, iTunes 10.5 has a slick “Downloads” features that allows you to download previous purchases. iTunes had the songs “registered” but the media was missing. So I deleted the songs from iTunes and then redownloaded my music. Everything was going good until I noticed that a purchase I made back in April, Ray LaMontagne’s “Live – Fall 2010 – EP” wasn’t showing up as a purchased item. I have the receipt of purchase in my iTunes purchases history, but it wasn’t showing up.

Here is my email tug of war with Apple on this subject.

Hello Cam,

Thank you for replying to iTunes Store Customer Support. My name is Naresh and I will be taking over this request for Mark.

Cam, I have posted a fresh copy of the purchased playlist "Live - Fall 2010 - EP" to your account. Please follow these steps to download the item with your iPhone:

1) On the Home screen, tap iTunes.

2) At the bottom of the iTunes app screen, tap Downloads. (If you don't see a Downloads option, tap More and then tap Downloads.)

3) Enter your password when prompted.

The playlist should begin downloading. If you lose your Internet connection, iPhone will display a message that says it cannot connect to the iTunes Store. Once you reconnect to the Internet, tap iTunes and then Downloads again, and then tap the blue down arrow icon that appears next to the item to resume the download.

I hope this information is helpful. Please feel free to contact me for further assistance.

I would be thankful for any opportunity to assist a valued customer like you.

Have a nice day!

Sincerely,

Naresh
iTunes Store/Mac App Store Customer Support

Please note: I work from Sunday to Wednesday & Saturday 7.00 AM to 04:00 PM CST

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email; any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated.

Mark,

My original message was not clear and for that I apologize.

I am not requesting a refund. I would like to restore the songs an iTunes upgrade somehow erased.

Heres what happened. I upgraded to the latest version of iTunes last night. Subsequent to the upgrade all of my purchased music was missing. In order to restore them, I had to delete my purchased songs from iTunes and then go into the iTunes Store and select Purchased from the Quicklinks menu. I then had to re-download my purchases.

Unbeknownst to me the EP, Live 2010, by Ray Lamontagne and the Pariah Dogs was missing - that is all four songs. Furthermore, it was not listed in iTunes as a purchase. However I have the receipt to prove I purchased it.

Again I am NOT requesting a refund. I am requesting access to all four songs on this EP so I can download then again and resolve this issue. It's the first time I've had problems with an upgrade losing purchased store items.

Thank you,

Cam
@camcollins

Sent from my iPad

On Oct 18, 2011, at 4:10 AM, iTunes Store <iTunesStoreSupport@apple.com> wrote:

> Dear Cam,
>
> Your request for a refund for "For the Summer (Live)" was carefully considered; however, according to the iTunes Store Terms of Sale, all purchases made on the iTunes Store are ineligible for refund. This policy matches Apple's refund policies and provides protection for copyrighted materials.
>
> You can review the iTunes Store Terms of Sale for more information:
>
> http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/sales.html
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Mark
> iTunes Store Customer Support
> http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/ww/
>
>
> Customer First Name : Cam
> Customer Last Name : Collins
> email : camc@camcollins.wpengine.com
> Web Order # : MGVLJ44SZ1
> Support Subject : I didn't receive this song
> Sub Issue : Incomplete download
> Comments : Apple ID: camc@camcollins.wpengine.com
> Platform : iTunes-iPhone/3.1.3 (2)
> Song Name : For the Summer (Live)
> Comments :
> All of these songs are gone - Not even in Purchased listing in ITunes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>

Do the Work

Goal Setting and Time Management

I am juggling some interesting opportunities at the moment. None of which are really “in line” with my core business. I spoke a fellow Twist Producer about one particular opportunity and told him I was going to pass. His comment to me was, “it’s difficult to keep centered when things like that show up”.

Keeping centered. What a concept. It got me to thinking whether these opportunities that keep surfacing are really good things I should focus on OR whether its the RESISTANCE (as Seth Godin calls it) trying to de-focus me from what’s important.

If you are interested in a quick read about the resistance and how to over come it check out “Do The Work“.

Two interesting news items from yesterday…

Main News, Popular

iphone-3gThis is an email I sent to my company on Thursday, Oct 6th, the day after Steve Jobs passed away. I felt compelled to make it public:

Team,

By now everyone on the planet knows that Steve Jobs passed away yesterday. He only resigned six weeks ago from Apple so the world was pretty shocked that he passed away so suddenly. Whether you love or hate Apple, what he deserves credit for is asking Why.

One of his favorite sayings was Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. This statement is plastered on my desktop background. He didn’t come up with this. He first saw this on the back cover of the final edition of the Whole Earth Catalog. (The Whole Earth Catalog was a hip collection of stuff you could buy mail order in the early 70s). He was inspired by this statement because he felt this statement encapsulated two primary beliefs that guided him throughout his life.

1. Stay Hungry — never rest on your laurels, never give up, its about the journey not the destination
2. Stay Foolish — you learn something every day. Never think you know it all or that you have everything figured out. Thats when its over.

To me the iPhone was Apple’s greatest invention. One of Jobs mentors was a guy named Alan Kay. Kay once said People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware and thats what Apple did with the iPhone. They looked at the popular smartphones on the market in those days like BlackBerry, Palm Treo and Motorola Q, and asked: Why have a keyboard? Why is half of the device taken up by something that isn’t really needed for every application?

In other words, software developers were having to work around limitations of the hardware. Why not make the hardware a clean slate, and let the software developer use whatever he or she needs to provide the best user experience for the problem they are trying to solve? Well the rest is history. Now we have a completely different way of interacting with computers in both the smartphone and tablet market.

Here is the video of the unveiling of the iPhone

So what’s the other piece of news? Buried in the headlines of Jobs untimely death and Amanda Knox arriving in Seattle (Seriously? This is news?), there was a little story in the LA Times that a company in India, with the help of the Indian government had just produced a tablet that costs $50 to make. With subsidies from the government they plan to sell them to students and schools for $35 OR LESS. I thought the Kindle Fire was cheap at $199. But $35 for something less functional and smaller than an iPad that starts at $500?

Here is the complete story

So what could all of this mean for us? The revolutionary changes in how people interact with computers from the iPhone to tablets is fundamentally changing how people work. No longer are they tethered to a desktop, monitor and mouse. They are now on the road, in the service yard, on the showroom floor, with something in their hand that is as powerful as the computer on their desktop just a few years ago.

This is an extraordinary time for us because we have the opportunity to now provide products to serve both our current customers and future customers in ways we couldn’t before. In the not too distant future our customers will be able to enter or look-up work orders, enter time, search for parts, accept payments on the move and check out a customer at a mobile register. All of these things are possible by doing what we’ve always done on a new platform.

Those of you that haven’t tried out our new DockMaster in the Cloud platform really must. We haven’t made a formal internal announcement about it yet, because we want to make sure that IT is ready for everyone to start using it. More to come on this. DockMaster in the Cloud is just a start. There are so many things this company can do with the right vision and guts to get out there and do it. So Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish and thank Steve Jobs while you are at it!

Cam

Steve Jobs – May his legacy endure

Main News

Stay hungry, Stay focused

Apple has been a part of my life since high school. I remember having one of the original Macs and installing a retrofitted hard drive myself. I also remember cursing my newly minted Newton as I struggled to make it work. Little did I know that I was holding the artifacts of what would evolve into technological greatness. What an incredibly inspirational man – from the company he left behind, the people he has touched and a legacy that will endure. Stay hungry, Stay foolish!

I screw this up all the time

Main News

I was typing out an email to an old friend and colleague when I ran into the dreaded grammar dilemma or “me” vs “I”. In my writing, I’ve become relatively good with writing things with a reasonable amount of grammatical accuracy based on how the sentence “sounds’ to me. But I am sorry, when it goes time to use a “me” or an “I” especially when I am talking about me going somewhere or doing something with someone else, neither pronoun sounds right to me.

In comes Google and the magic of search. In Google I typed “me and a friend” and the very first link was to an Oxford Dictionary tip that succinctly solved my problem. The bottom line: use the pronoun “I” when its the subject of the verb and use the pronoun “me” when its the object of the verb.

Problem solved…Next.

Why is this happening to me?

Main News

Seth's head

People wonder — why is this happening to me? When will I get paid what I am worth? When will the normal that we knew return? Newflash — it won’t. Welcome to the new economy. Its different and it’s painful, but the shift from 30-years working for one company and getting the gold watch is over – forever. As presented in Seth’s post, “Job creation is a false idol. The future is about gigs and assets and art and an ever-shifting series of partnerships and projects. It will change the fabric of our society along the way.”

Write more, talk less

Main News

In a world where people spend a lot of time talking and likely even more time reading email, I agree with people like Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki and Stephen Pressfield that its time to start writing more – essentially to create more and create often.

I spend a lot of time reading and writing emails. Many of these are simply unimportant or inane. We hide behind email in lieu of calling people or walking two offices over to have a face to face conversation. I am committed to share more, create more, live more and express more “publicly” through writing. Who knows, I may throw in some artwork, music and videos on occasion.