Mike Cohen

Mini Review: Ashley Maher – "Amina"

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If you enjoy Vampire Weekend’s Afro-pop sensibility, you’ll probably love Ashley Maher. Ashley is a California-based singer songwriter who sounds a bit like Joni Mitchell, but her music has a strong west African influence.

Her 5th album, “Amina” is her most authentically Senegalese. Produced by Cameroonian producer Andre Manger, portions of it were recorded at Jimi M’baye’s Studio Dogo in Dakar featuring Jimi, tama player Assane Thiam, and other Senegalese musicians.

The song “Joy” tells the story of her trip to Senegal, which you can also read about in her blog. She gives shout outs to several Senegalese musicians and alludes to Youssou N’dour’s song “Old Tucson”.

Ashley is not only a wonderful singer, she’s also a master of complex Senegalese dances like the Sabar.

In-app purchase now available for free apps

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Apple just sent the following email to iPhone developers:

In App Purchase for free apps.png

In the future, perhaps I can use that to upgrade the free version of ICHC to Pro features instead of requiring a separate purchase, although I can see some logistical problems with it. In order to allow current paid users to receive updates, I’d still have to support both versions. I don’t want to require them to purchase 2.0 again when I release it.

links for 2009-10-14

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  • Distributing iTunes LPs without iTunes
    Within days of the iTunes 9 and iTunes LP announcement, people had already thoroughly hacked apart the iTunes LP format only to discover it was just a clever combination of images, HTML, CSS and Javascript. Because any web developer could create an iTunes LP, it seemed strange that indie labels were left out in the cold, with LPs having a high cost of entry and no distribution of their LPs on the iTunes Store.
    (tags: itunes apple)

links for 2009-10-13

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New Condo

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I bought a bank owned unit in my condo development for $39,000 & closed on it today. We don’t have as many foreclosures as a lot of other places do, but prices are still low, although this is way below the current market value. Since it’s smaller than my current unit, I plan to rent it out for a few years until I can sell it at a good price.

The unit is in pretty good condition, with new tile floors, fresh paint, and an enclosed patio, although every switch & electric outlet was removed and the wall is damaged in a few spots from mirrors being removed. I already have someone interested in renting it, so I’ll be busy the next few days fixing it.

I took some pictures of it, which I posted here.

I bought this!.jpg

Rejected!

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I just got a rejection letter from Apple for PicSlide, not for the application itself, but for the keywords I used.

Thank you for submitting PicSlide 1.0 to the App Store. We’ve reviewed PicSlide 1.0 and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store at this time because of inappropriate ‘Keywords’ used to identify your application. We cannot post applications that contain terms, product names, brand names, or entities that are registered trademarks in their search criteria. It would be appropriate to remove [redacted] and [redacted].

Please visit iTunes Connect, Manage Applications to remove the inappropriate ‘Keywords’, and resubmit your binary for review.

Note: Keyword terms must be related to your application content and cannot contain offensive terms. It is not appropriate to reference other applications. Keywords can be single words or phrases; keep in mind the text field is limited to 100 characters. All Keywords must be separated by commas otherwise the system will see it as one keyword.

It’s actually a good thing, because it let me change the secondary category to photography, which I had wanted to do.