Mike Cohen

My absence

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I haven’t been posting for a while because I’ve been feeling very burned out and discouraged after what happened with I Can Has Cheezburger. I’m very hurt by some of the comments by some of the customers saying things like this:

Hugely disappointed with the update, to the point of where I ended up replacing the ICHC app altogether with a bookmark icon created through Safari on my phone’s home screen. At least zooming works properly by going to the blog directly through Safari, and YouTube videos immediately trigger the YouTube app rather than going through two redirectons.

That YouTube issue has been changed in the update that I submitted more than a month ago, which also adds support for Viddler videos which are now being used at FAILblog. Rather than seeing those kinds of complaints, I felt that it would be better to pull the app from sale completely.

I really felt that this version was an improvement over the old one, but people seem to universally hate it. I rewrote a lot of code to make it a lot cleaner and made some very major improvements such as support for ICHC’s API for submitting LOLs. The unapproved update also added a shuffle feature, which was widely requested and eliminated the click to play graphic for movies.

Comments like the ones I’ve seen here just make me feel like giving up iPhone development. I certainly won’t develop any more applications that access the internet.

Asides

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I’ve added a section called asides to the bottom of the right sidebar, which consists of the RSS feed of my Tumblr. Most of the items posted there come from my Google Reader shared items.

I’ve also installed the WPTouch plugin, so this blog will look a lot nicer on an iPhone.

links for 2009-08-02

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  • IBM Uses Call-Detail Records To Identify "Friends"
    Big Blue may know what you did last summer. Or at least who you called. In a move out of the NSA's playbook, IBM Research has been scrutinizing the call-detail records of 'one of the largest mobile operators in the world' (PDF). By analyzing who calls whom, and for how long, IBM claims its patent-pending snooping software can now identify circles of 'friends' who tend to exhibit the same profit-threatening behavior. 'We believe that our analysis is a first of its kind that exploits the underlying social network in a telecom call graph,' boasted a team of IBM researchers and a UMD prof. For now, IBM seems to have focused on using the info to see if your friends are churners, so you can be dealt with pro-actively lest you follow their lead and bolt. However, IBM suggests its SNAzzy data mining technology (Social Network Analysis for Telecom Business Intelligence) has a bright future, noting it 'is also capable of analyzing any kind of social network or graph, not just telecom networks.'
    (tags: privacy socialnetwork)

Tumblr posting script revisited

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I’ve made some fixes to my Post To Tumblr script to make it more reliable. I found that many newsfeeds don’t have a summary property, so I’m using description instead, which is more correct. I’m also testing the existence of all properties before I use them.

Here’s the updated script. You can also download it here.

on urlencode(x)
	set TheCode to do shell script "python -c 'import sys, urllib; print urllib.quote(sys.argv[1])' " & quoted form of (x)
	return TheCode
end urlencode

tell application "NetNewsWire"
	if title of selectedHeadline exists then
		set q_title to my urlencode(title of selectedHeadline)
	else
		set q_title to "Untitled"
	end if

	if permalink of selectedHeadline exists then
		set q_url to my urlencode(permalink of selectedHeadline)
	else
		set q_url to ""
	end if

	if description of selectedHeadline exists then
		set q_content to my urlencode(description of selectedHeadline)
	else
		set q_content to ""
	end if

	set tumblr to "http://www.tumblr.com/share?v=3&u=" & q_url & "&t=" & q_title & "&s=" & q_content
	open URL in new tab with tumblr

end tell

Changing app store ratings

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I finally discovered the trick to change the ratings for ICHC, so hopefully Apple can review it now. As long as there’s a valid binary, iTunes Connect won’t let you change the ratings. If you reject the binary, you can go to edit information and change the ratings BEFORE you upload a new binary. Once you upload that new binary, the ratings are locked out again.

I set the ratings to infrequent/mild for all items, which still only results in a 12+ rating, not the 17+ rating Apple requested. We’ll see if Apple approves it now.

Post to Tumblr from NetNewsWire

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I use Tumblr to collect & share clippings from NetNewsWire & other items too small for a blog post. With the previous version of NetNewsWire, when I added an item to my clippings, the RSS feed from NewsGator was automatically imported into Tumblr.

Since that feature is gone in the NetNewsWire beta, I came up with another way to share items in Tumblr. Here’s an AppleScript that opens a new tab to post the currently selected headline in Tumblr in a way similar to the Tumblr bookmarklet.

on urlencode(x)
	set TheCode to do shell script "python -c 'import sys, urllib; print urllib.quote(sys.argv[1])' " & quoted form of (x)
	return TheCode
end urlencode

tell application "NetNewsWire"
	set item_title to (title of selectedHeadline)
	set item_url to (permalink of selectedHeadline)
	set item_content to (summary of selectedHeadline)

	set q_title to my urlencode(item_title)
	set q_url to my urlencode(item_url)
	set q_content to my urlencode(item_content)

	set tumblr to "http://www.tumblr.com/share?v=3&u=" & q_url & "&t=" & q_title & "&s=" & q_content
	--display dialog tumblr
	open URL in new tab with tumblr

end tell

Download the script here and drop it in NetNewsWire’s script folder.

You can follow my Tumblr at mike3k.tumblr.com.

NetNewsWire now syncs with Google Reader

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NetNewsWire has always been my favorite desktop newsreader, but as much as I love it, I really hated Newsgator Online, which it syncs with. I always preferred Google Reader and would rather sync with it. My wish has been granted – a new NetNewsWire beta which syncs with Google Reader was released today.

It’s a beta and it still has a few rough edges, but I’m thrilled to finally be rid of NewsGator and be able to use NetNewsWire with Google Reader. This change was necessary since NewsGator is discontinuing NewsGator online for end users on August 31.

NetNewsWire for iPhone will also be updated to use Google Reader.