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Become a millionaire – write a great webapp!

Today I wrote my first “Initial impressions”. It is about a eBook which dives into AngularJS. A framework from Google offering great features for webapp developers.

The future wil undoubtedly contain lots of web based apps. I expect that it may will be an importent supplement for app store based native apps. We are not there yet, but HTML/CSS/Javascript based browser apps are getting stronger and stronger by the day. Things like accessing the hardware of say the phone are offered through . You can for instance access the webcam and manipulate the live video, doing things like “Chroma key” (“green curtain”) overlaying elements on the video from the webapp. All done using only and javascript!

Webapps run anywhere only a browser is required. The days of plugins in the browser are long gone! Many devices today share the rendering engine used to convert then HTML markup, the CSS styling and the javascript into a webpage, they use an open source engine: WebKit. For instance Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Opera desktop browsers all use webkit. Other devices like Apple and modern Samsung TVs also use it – so we are getting closer to a write-once-use-everywhere scenarie, and that is great!

When someone wants to offer an online service it makes great sense to choose a platform which have a wide use. The cost of developing such services are lower when you can write-once-use-everywhere. Maintenance costs are lower and it will all lead to more services for us users.

It also makes it much easier to develop in such a setup cause as many discover the power of webapps we will see more developers blog and share their experiences with the HTML5 based webapps. It is a positive development which we all enjoy.

A great example from history with environments that works is the Microsoft Visual Basic script. It was the fundament of many of the initial applications developed for the Microsoft Window operating system. Thousands of “apps” were developed by many people. Many of the apps were dead after some years, but as so many “seeds” were planted the number of surviving apps were larger, and many of the software houses developing for today have root in that area of time. It also was the reason for many people to choose windows.

Apple iOS saw the same development, and today many people choose iOS instead of say Google Android because of the fact iOS have more apps.

With webapps we may finally have the chance to run our beloved app anywhere – choose whatever platform you desire, just be sure it has a great browser! Also we may see even cheeper apps because we dont have to pay a percent to the hosting app store as we sell the app.

This takes me back to where I started: I wrote my initial impressions on an eBook which is about AngularJS. AngularJS is a framework which will let people write great webapps – who knows if YOUR webapp will attract so much attention that you become a millionaire? :-) Let your hope drive you life, go for realising your dreams! And perhaps one of those dreams can be realized through a webapp, written in AngularJS, something that this book is an example of :-)

Initial impressions from the ebook “instant AngularJS (starter)”

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The perfect tool for reference search and snippets?

Development involves using a lot of tools, apis, methods and documentation for such items is often found using your friend Google Search. Today I have seen a very cool tool for Mac OSX. Its called Dash, and its a free app found in the App store.

The cute logo of the Dash app

The cute logo of the Dash app

You can install the Dash app from the App store.
It is free but has a “Full version” which cost around
$ 5,- which I think is a very fair price!
You may also download it from the developer website.

What is it that Dash offers?

I must admit that my experience with Dash is sparse, and this blog post is only an introduction to the app. It does search in a lot of the wide spread apis from anywhere in your Mac OSX. It has – to mention a few – HTML 5, css,  javascript, , UI, , XSLT, Perl, Ruby, NodeJS…

In the image below I have opened a document in my preferred editor “Sublime Text 2“. I want more information about the tag “section”, and as I have set up the short-cut “Shift+Cmd+$” in the OSX global short cut settings I simply mark the tag and press that key combination. Voila! Dash opens and have found some nice HTML5 documentation for the section tag, cool!

Dash offers integration to any Mac OSX app

Dash offers integration to any Mac OSX app

Snippets – cross app too!

It also offers snippets, which I have tried only a little. It seems very cool as it works anywhere allowing you to add “abbreviations”  for each snippet. So say you have a HTML5 boilerplate which you use a lot, simply paste the boilerplate into Dash, add some variables or an date place field (which will automatically insert current date when executed) and define say “html5bp. Every time you type that abbreviation it will be replaced with the snippet!

If you have any comments or experiences related to Dash please share through a comment here on this blog post.

My small notes – updates

  • I would love to get “fuzzy search” like in Sublime Text 2
  • Seems that you cannot easily share found directly to say twitter, pity

Related information

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Wish for 2013: Let there be more HTML5 apps

One the things I hope for 2013 is to see more based apps. As evolves I hope that the features found in based apps will make the developers prefer more than native apps.

A little history – the Flash epoch

I have never been a fan of Flash but I acknowledge that many very innovative and functional apps were created using Flash. Flash made it easy to develop cross platform apps which would run here there and everywhere. As I have not really developed in Flash I can only share my thoughts about why it “suddenly” turned into something not fancy.

Apple did not let Flash into its IOS for mobile devices must have been one of the major reasons. I guess that Apple did not like that powerful applications could be build on there app store based devices. Apple is receiving a lot of money through the percentage they get when people sell apps through the app store. If developers could develop apps which were as powerful as native IOS apps it would be a thread towards their business model for IOS, I guess… Also they would have no control over how apps were distributed (sold).

Another angle is that the only way to develop apps in Flash would be using the tool from one company: Adobe. It would be a closed system controlled by one company – not good.

Native apps

Today we are seeing a lot of native apps which are coded to run on a specific OS. You can develop them using many development tools and also cross compile them so that they run on more than one OS, but often it is a relative low level language like C++ or JAVA. You will have to register and pay to gain access to get your app distributed for each OS. I think that it is okay that people have to pay for the handling and distribution of apps, as it involves some work doing that. Of cause you can discuss if the percent the distributer (Apple, Google and Microsoft) are charging could pay for this work, but I think that it is okay.

When you buy an app

Talking about smaller apps like those you can run on a mobile device like at phone or a you normally can only use the bought app on that device. Like when I bought an – I bought some apps which I really liked. At a later state I bought an Apple Mac Mini computer and discovered that the apps for the small mobile were not available for my much stronger OSX based device! Why? Because the apps were written in a low level language for the mobile iOS! What? Can it be true?

HTML5, javascript and CSS3 apps, now!

That is why I hope to see developers go for modern HTML5, javascript and CSS3 based apps! Easy to develop, thousand of tools, millions of people know about those “languages” and it is cross device, cross platform apps! They run on smart phones, computers, modern TVs, tablets and many other places.

They are easy distributed, easy updated and with open source browser engines like webkit (which is implemented to run even in your TV) they run on so many devices.

As a front-end developer it also extends the areas where I can make a difference. The audience of my code is broadened and I can work developing on many other places than “just” websites. I could develop a TV app for the local community (which would also run any other place which understands HTML5, javascript and CSS3).

For now I have “invested” in a developer license for the 8 market. Cause they accept HTML based apps! The apps will run on any device which runs 8. That is actually also something I hope that the other players, Google and Apple will go for: Cross device thinking – no more: Just iPad or just OSX! Please!

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Lav stop-motion film med din iPad

Min familie har fra min far side altid optaget film, min far optog smalfilm og dem er jeg meget glade for nu. Det var sort-hvid men det gjorde ikke oplevelserne mindre gode, nu her 40 år senere. Min storbror og jeg har haft mange gode timer der relaterer til smalfilm – vores far lærte os hvordan vi planlagde, optog, redigerede og fremviste smalfilm. Vi fik lavet små film og evnen til at tænke i har jeg nydt godt af siden.

Næste generation bruger selvfølgelig en computer

Nu er det så min tur til at give bolden videre! Jeg skal have lært min datter glæden ved at kunne lave film. Hun er allerede glad for at fotografere og hun har faktisk skudt nogle rigtige skud! Se f.eks. dette billede:

Et ganske godt billede taget af min 6 årige datter

Måske fordi det er taget af en lille pige og ikke af en voksen er der et andet udtryk i personens ansigt.

app –

app til iOS StopMotion Recorder

Jeg har prøvet forskellige apps til at lave /stopmotion med og har fundet en til 6 kr (!) som hedder StopMotion Recorder.

Prisen er da værd at nævne:

Hvor ellers finder man legetøj til 6 kr?

Appen fungerer på mange iOS devices: iPod, og iPad, så hvis du er så heldig at du har en af disse enheder så kan du jo købe og installere den gennem iTunes/appstore.

Den er meget simpel at anvende: Man starter den, klikker på den røde optag knap og hver gang man så berører skærmen tages der et billede. Så er det bare at stille noget op foran iPad’en og “flyt-klik”, “flyt-klik”, “flyt-klik”…. indtil scenen er er færdig.

Når man er færdig med at optage kan man redigere i filmen og senere gemme den til iPad’ens filmstrimmel eller eksportere den til YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, flicker eller e-mail. Man kan også lægge musik bag og andre relevante ting (læs selv på iTunes/appstore).

Anitas første “rigtige” stop-motion film lavet vha. StopMotion Recorder appen.
Gode råd – mød: “Trial and error”

Hvis du skal igang med at optage er det vigtigt at vide hvad der er indenfor kameravinklen og hvad der er udenfor. Jeg har selv fundet en løsning som dog ikke lykkedes 100% på den video Anita har lavet og som kan ses ovenfor (via YouTube). Løsningen er at sætte et par sytråde udfra hvor iPad’en stod – så var de nemt at se hvornår man var inde og ude af kameraet… Som det ses så blev jeg dog lidt snydt og de to snore var placeret INDE i selve billedefelter – men den fejl begår vi så ikke igen!

Det er jo ikke optimalt, men så sørger jeg bare for at tage den snak med min datter:

Trial and error:
Man kan godt lære af sine fejl, og det er okay at lære af fejl
– ingen fejl, intet nyt lært!

Et godt råd, når man som barn skal for at undgå at få billeder af ens hænder er at sige et ord for de to ting man gør: “Flyt” (når man ændrer på scenen) og “Klik” når man trykker og får lyd feedback fra app’en.

Nu er det snart min datters tur – og jeg glæder mig til at se hvad hun selv synes skal animeres. Jeg vil endnu ikke købe en iPad til hende, en telefon er også for tidligt, men en iPod som også erstatter hendes lille 99 kr mp3 afspiller er vores valg. Da StopMotion Recorder også dur til iPod, ja, så kan hun lave film selv med hendes egen iPod (når hun får den).

Billeder fra location

Opstillingen er parat og optagelserne er igang

Sådan ser det ud fra "fotografen"

Relavante steder
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At vælge iPad model

En god ven spurgte mig hvilken han skulle vælge. Han arbejder indenfor bogproduktion også e-bøger. Her er hvad jeg skrev til ham:

Som udgangspunkt vil jeg altid anbefale den nyeste (og største) hvis man har råd til det.
Når det er sagt mener jeg at

  • man sagtens kan klare sig med en 32 gb
  • man skal være opmærksom på at “the new iPad” bruger meget mere strøm og derfor også er meget længere om at genoplade

Det er også værd at vente mindst en uges tid, da Apple formodentlig lancerer en iPad mini i næste uge. Det er nok en 7″, men den kan gøre at priserne for de andre falder (hver gang der kommer en ny generation er den tidligere generation faldet ca 1000 kr)

Der er også noget andet man skal huske i forhold til retina contra ikke-retina enheder. Det ser ud til at fremtiden hedder ekstrem høj opløsning (retina), men ja… Jeg ved ikke rigtig om det ikke er lidt overkill… Min iPad 2 fungerer i hvert fald fint for mig, men hvis du skal lave apps der også skal virke på retina devices og skal kunne teste… Ja… Jeg ved ikke…

En anden ting er at der kommer nye features som er der på seneste enhed, siri, hvor man kan tale styre enheden og ja, andre ting…

GPS
Du bør måske købe en enhed der har (4) 3G netværk. Det ville jeg gøre! Så får du ud over mulighed for at komme på nettet uden wifi også bruge GPS, og der kommer i iOs 6 (her i efteråret) et helt nyt ikke-google maps kort fra Apple, som ser rigtig lækkert ud!

Håber at det hjalp dig lidt, og kør så ind til f.eks. Bilka eller eplehuset og PRØV dem! Side by side sammenligning vil nemlig være en mere realistisk test, da der her indgår helhedsindtryk!

Hvilke overvejelser mener I der skal med i ens overvejelser?
Har I nogle indspark? Skal han overhovedet købe en iPad, eller skal han købe en Android baseret?
Skriv…skriv… Kommentarer er velkomne, lige meget hvilken -religion du tror på :-)

Ps: denne post er skrevet på min iPad 2 vha. app.

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Hent indhold fra iCloud på din windows PC

Hvis du som mig har det ene ben i “Apple lejren” f.eks. gennem en eller en og bruger systemet til at lave kopiere af indhold i skyen, så kan du faktisk godt hente indholdet over på din PC. Apple har lavet en applikation til dette som hedder “”. Her kan du se hvad du skal gøre for at få den mulighed.

 

Download iClod fra Apple: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1455

Kør programmet:

Når du kører applikationen første gang skal du indtaste dit apple-id

Vælg de tjenster du ønsker at synkronisere:

Vælg de tjenster du ønsker at synkronisere

Efter du har valgt tjenster starter synkroniseringen:

Efter du har valgt tjenster starter synkroniseringen

Nogle af de ting du synkroniserer har instillinger, feks. kan du vælge hvor skal synkroniseres til.

Indstillinger for :

Indstillinger for Fotostream

Fotostream () har nu hentet billederne fra min iPad:

Fotostream (Photo Stream) har nu hentet billederne fra min iPad

Ikke alene henter den billeder fra dine devices som er koblet på iCloud, men du kan også uploade gennem folderen "Uploads" som ligger hvor du har bedt om at den skal ligge. Det betyder jo så at du ved at kopiere billeder ind i den folder automatisk vil kunne tilgå dem på din device, iPad f.eks. Ret smart!

 

Jeg må dog sige at jeg med undren kun fandt dele af mine billeder i “My Photo Stream” folderen. Det er sikkert fordi jeg ikke har valgt at få synkroniseret folderne på min iPad tænker jeg… Jeg åbnede min iPad og gik ind under instillingerne og bad den synkronisere (sikkerhedskopiere):

Under indstillinger og iCloud kan man gennemtvinge en sikkerhedskopieringI iOS kan du under indstillinger og iCloud kan man gennemtvinge en sikkerhedskopiering

Det screenshoot der er ovenfor er blevet synkroniseret efter jeg bad min iPad om at synkronisere, men alle mine andre ældre billeder kom ikke med… Hvis der er nogen der har en god forklaring og hjælp til hvordan man får det hele med, så skriv det endelig her!

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Advarsel: Spillet Wordfeud er stærkt vanedanende :-)

Jeg spiller kun sjældent computerspil, men den anden dag blev jeg anbefalet et spil som kan spilles på iOS og Android platformene. Spillet Wordfeud er gratis og er en ordleg en slags scrabble hvor man skal indsætte bogstaver så de danner ord. Det er ret simpelt og kræver ikke megen forklaring – lige til at gå til. Det er et multiplayer spil hvor man spiller over internettet mod en anden person – det kan være en man kender eller en tilfældig. Man kan have flere spil kørende og har 72 timer til sit træk, ellers taber man. Det er god hjernegymnastik og hvis man f.eks. starter et spil op på sin og så senere sidder et sted hjemmefra og venter, så kan man spille spillet videre på sin android telefon (eller ). Simpelt, sjovt og godt!

Find spillet her: http://wordfeud.com/ Her er nogle screenshoots.

 

Hjemmesiden hvor du kan få mere informationer

Her kan man se information om de spil man har igang. På billedet afventer jeg 3 spil - de andres tur

Eksempel på spil. I nederste venstre hjørne kan man se points. Rækken af bogstaver der går på tværs for neden er mine bogstaver

links
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Want to print from your iPad to your windows printer? Here is a quick guide.

I have just bought my first Apple product – an 2, rather nice device I must say Smiley A friend of mine is all Apple, so it’s Apple here, Apple there and Apple everywhere! It is impressive to see how well integrated it all is – but how about integration to my PC? Here I will give you a guide to how you can on a PC connected printer using from your iPad (or I guess) using wireless network and .

What you need…

Well basically you can just follow the guide here on this page: “How to Enable AirPrint Service on Windows 7/Vista/XP (32-bit/64-bit)?”. It involves these steps:

  1. Windows 7 (or perhaps Vista, excuse me for only having Win7 installed)
  2. Share the printer which you want to print to from your iPad/iPhone.
    A Danish version of the control panel
    Open the control panel and locate your printer under “units and printers”
    Choose properties for the printer and click the “sharing”
    Check “Share this printer”
  3. Install iTunes
  4. Download AirPrint installer
  5. Run it as administrator (Right click the downloaded package and choose “Run as administrator”)
    Just follow the instructions of the installer
  6. We need to allow AirPrint features in the windows firewall.
    Locate and click the “Allow a program through Windows Firewall” in control panel security section.
    Click the “Change settings” button if you cannot change the settings by now.
    image

You are now ready to print from your iPad/iPhone to your pc connected printer.

From your iPad you may open your photo album and tab in the top right side:

image

Here you can choose print and the select printer. If your printer does not appear you may need to return to the control panel and remove/add the sharing option.

If you do not see the printer you may even have to add some windows features. Open the control panel and select “Turn on/off windows features” in the left side of the add/remove program section. Then locate the LPD and LPR printer options under the “printing and document services”

image

When you have finished these steps you can print over network from your iPad/iPhone – even if you do not own a Apple computer Smiley

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