While I Was Away

Many of you know I’m the founder of Grocio.com. For the past many months I’ve been working away at putting that business together. In the process I fell in love (all over again) with the iPhone. This time – as a developer.

Those of you who know me realize I’m no developer despite these many years of being an Select member of the ADC. I’m barely a graphic designer (by my own standards). But, I can reverse engineer stuff be it code or whatever and obtain a passing understanding of things fairly quickly. So it has turned out to be with iPhone apps (web and native alike).

My first app has been submitted to and declined by Apple in the past couple weeks. It’s been a real trick to address the last of their two objections. But, I’m grateful the problem has been so hard for me to overcome… it’s forced me to explore nooks and crannies of the iPhone SDK I might never have stretched myself to investigate. My problem’s not yet solved… I’ll stick with it and perservere and in the process meet some fascinating people and methods in the process. And, reinvigorated my respect for these tiny little devices and the development platforms available for them.

Even if I never develop another app by my own hand I’ll have gained a first hand respect for the magic you adept developers weave and the magical tools Apple has made available to each and every one of us for free.

[REVIEW] iFrogz Earpollution Earbuds

iFrogz was kind enough to send me a pair of their Earpollution Earbuds to review. The short of it: They’re decent earbuds at a good value. More after the jump…

Snow Leopard Imminent

The Apple Store has just updated to note Snow Leopard ships on August 28. Lots of update options: $29 update is presumably an updater only for those of us running 10.5.x already. If you buy a new Mac that doesn’t have Snow Leopard installed… $9.95 will get you there. A boxed full-install, set of Snow Leopard will cost $129.00

Snow Leopard unlimited server will cost $449 and ships at the same time.

Visit http://store.apple.com/ for more details.

“CHEAT” is Now in the App Store

My friend Shay Arnett announced tonight his iPhone/iPod Touch app, “CHEAT” has been approved for App Store distribution.

Shay is one hard working guy and a new dad to boot. I’ll never know 1/3 of what he does about development. But, for $.99 I can hang with him feeling a little (okay, a LOT) more in the know than before. He’s packed over 475 cheat sheets for HTML, Rails, CSS, jQuery, Prototype, Obj C, testing, text editors, etc.

Get yourself some “CHEAT” today and support a super nice guy who created a super helpful app.

Hey, Shay… what do I do with all these little O’Reilly pocket guides now?

$5USD Gets You $500K SpyMaster

A new craze has hit Twitter and it’s called SpyMaster.

It’s free to play. It’s fun. And, there’s no telling where this thing is going. Right now, it’s a total rocket ship. I’ve checked for terms and conditions… there are none. So, seems we’re all clear to proceed. If you’re on the verge of quitting/abandoning your SpyMaster account… Please, consider wiring me your liquid assets balance. My Swiss Bank account is 000000027398 1153681740385

I was a good sport about a (successful) assassination attempt on my account (@GeraldBuckley) and was rewarded with a massive heaping of in game cash. I’m now set on in-game cash and basically continue playing just to level up and kick as much high-level booty as I can. It takes a LONG time to make enough to open a Swiss Bank account. However, once you have one (and I do) it’s trivial to wire money to other accounts and “open” them for the other player. Even $1 xferred would do the trick.

I’ve been wondering what I could possibly DO with all this excess in-game cash… and the entrepreneur in me has prevailed.

I’m selling it!

For $5USD I will happily wire $500K to your in-game Swiss Bank account. Because the Directorate has capped the amount of funds that can be transferred between two acounts I can send as much as $500K to as many accounts as I like. I accept PayPal (gerald@grocio.com) or TwitPay (@geraldbuckley) or Amazon Payments. Remember to include your ENTIRE Swiss Bank account number or the transfer will be delayed unnecessarily as I’ll have to email or DM you.

So, to recap:

• $5 USD via paypal, amazon payments, or twitpay for $500,000 in Spymaster funds
• I need your Swiss Banking # (you can either follow me and dm it or you can email it to me)

I’ve been on Twitter for a LONG time and have a terrific reputation. I work hard and I play hard. But, at the root of it all is an entrepreneur. ’nuff said there. You may want a little more proof-positive I have what I’m selling. So, a picture is worth a thousand words…

Another Open Letter to Tim Cook, Apple

Mr. Cook, as one of your long standing Apple Developers in good standing and a former employee of Apple… Thank you!

Not only do I feel listened to (due to the very cordial contact from Mr. Ron Okamoto & the last open letter) but the recent decision to go forward with the Snow Leopard Developer Forum is a VERY welcome move. I’ve logged in and looked at the lay of the land and by the looks of it I’m most definitely not alone. LOTS of healthy participation going on.

Thanks again.

Very sincerely yours,

Gerald Buckley

To Avoid Swine Flu Do NOT Do This

Click thru for the bigger pic. Just thought, given the insanely high pitch this topic is getting (maybe rightly so, I dunno) it might be fun to put a little levity into it if possible. Certainly not something a parent would like seeing happen right about now. On any other day it’s just funny or gross. Today…? You decide.

I Have 100 FREE Legit DivX7 Pro SNs

DivX7 is unleashed today and it is Bad Ass!

And, our buddies at DivX have graciously done it again and given us 100 DivX Pro (Yes… PRO!) serials.

These are for Mac only folks (this is a Mac-only blog except for the frequent jabbing at the “have-nots” I do for sport).

HERE’S HOW YOU SCORE THE HOTTEST NEW SERIAL NUMBER AROUND..

Blogging Odometer Hits 700,000

Well, I’ve been at this now for four+ years and we just passed the 700,000 visitors served mark.

It’s taken about 5 months to rack up each of the last couple of 100,000 marks. Lately I’ve been spending the majority of my time on my startup and on some of the other social networking sites and less time writing. Once the Snow Leopard release arrives I’ll have MUCH more to blog about.

The “Installing Leopard from DMG” post is by far the most popular post here.

The “Open Letter to Tim Cook” post resulted in an interesting conversation I can only write about AFTER a certain something happens. And, of ALL the 1,100 posts to date… it’s the one post I’m most proud of. And, before too long, you’ll see why: I’m told it’s going to manifest in a major announcement out of Cupertino.

Finally, ALL of the comments and commenters are so very appreciated. Keep ‘em coming.

Google Voice: The New Grand Central

It’s official: Google Voice is the successor of Grand Central.

Seems it’s invite only and they’re hard as hen’s teeth to get right now. Even if you have a Grand Central account it’s not switched over just yet and an invite is still required. Follow @GoogleVoice at Twitter or read the blog for more details.

<< Google Voice Blog: Moving to Google Voice! >>