Team Fortress 2 Spy by ~GraffitiWatcher : http://graffitiwatcher.deviantart.com/art/Team-Fortress-2-Spy-174849322

Joe Molloy is a freelance technical consultant, project manager and writer, based in London, UK.

Joe helps start-ups and companies convert their vision and ideas into real world products and services. Joe specialises in helping companies get it done.

Now this item, called the NeoLucida, is a modern take on a very old bit of tech: the Camera Lucida.

The what?

Two US art professors have drawn on David Hockney’s book Secret Knowledge that points out that the old masters were the Early Adopters of their time. They used optics to produce the type of art works that we love and admire so much.

These guys have successfully raised enough money on kickstarter to fund a limited run of a modern version of this. They have used modern CAD techniques to produce a fabulous piece of kit. After after this initial run, they will open source it so that anyone can get it produced for themselves. Cool.

I would love to get back into drawing, as I use to love it. I almost went down the art route, but ended up taking my love of Biology all the way to degree level. I wish I could get hold of one of these and take some time to just sit down and draw.

Footnotes:

First seen on Wired

Joe Molloy is a freelance technical consultant, project manager and writer, based in London, UK.

Joe helps start-ups and companies convert their vision and ideas into real world products and services. Joe specialises in helping companies get it done.

This is the action of taking the user out of the app to mobile Safari on first load and then taking them back. This action is being performed by the app to place a cookie into the Safari cache so that the user of the app can be linked up for further tracking.

If you haven’t seen this in action, here the Hotels.com app doing this (skip to 01:00 to miss the blurb):

Gigaom have also chipped into this story by saying that those app rejections were not due to the cookie issue but due to the way the app interface works. In the case quoted it was due to the app jumping out to Safari and then returning to the app.

This will not be a problem for most developers. Sometimes it is necessary to get authorisation and the only way to get an authorisation maybe via a website. Most have some sort of SDK that relies upon their app being installed or they may have an oauth2 service. Either way you would use a uiwebview / child browser within the app to achieve this. No need to go outside at all.

This is clunky functionality in order to by-pass the sandbox separation of mobile Safari and the app and no one should force this experience on anyone. The only time that mobile Safari should open from an app is if a user wants this to happen.

So the reality here, is that Apple are using the “your app interface functionality sucks” clause to reject these apps. I do not have a problem with this, as I agree that this type of app design is just out right poor.

If Apple are beginning to enforce the other agenda mentioned, the Advertising Identifier, then this is a strange way to go about it. If they are going to enforce that policy I think they will do it via developer announcements and give a cut off date. Either way the only folks who are crying foul with are the marketing and advertisement driven apps folks who have to fix their apps now.

Footnotes

1. If you put “Safari flip-flop” into Google you are presented with a large selection of faux animal skin style footwear. Not what I was after and not really my style, but if they float your boat, go for it.
2. Will this have an effect on some free or advertisement driven app strategies? Probably, but there are many other ways to track a user other than cookies. Safari cookies are not great and as we found out last year can be by-passed despite what you may want. For a great article on that episode have a look at Daring Fireball’s “Cookies and Privacy” item.

Joe Molloy is a freelance technical consultant, project manager and writer, based in London, UK.

Joe helps start-ups and companies convert their vision and ideas into real world products and services. Joe specialises in helping companies get it done.

I showed my wife Sarah. She said she would be impressed if the technique meant it also got ironed and made its way up the stairs into my chest of draws.

Japanese version

Slightly different technique in English

First seen by me on Lifehacker

Joe Molloy is a freelance technical consultant, project manager and writer, based in London, UK.

Joe helps start-ups and companies convert their vision and ideas into real world products and services. Joe specialises in helping companies get it done.

If I’m working at a client site where I can’t bring the bike inside, I do get worried about it. Why anyone would want to take a steel framed 15 year old bike is beyond me. More annoyingly if I don’t want to ride home, I can’t take it on the train or tube system unless it is a folding bike. OK fair enough we are packed in like sardines already.

I like the idea of the Brompton folding bikes but I would prefer a larger wheel size. Now there is in my opinion a candidate, the Montague Folding Military Bike

If they can jump out of planes with these things, then I might just be able to struggle onto the tube with it. If any start-ups out there are thinking of creating a parachuting commuter service to South London, I’m game.

Joe Molloy is a freelance technical consultant, project manager and writer, based in London, UK.

Joe helps start-ups and companies convert their vision and ideas into real world products and services. Joe specialises in helping companies get it done.

Remember “the chair is the killer, the chair is the killer.”

I will freely admit it, I hate the gym. My exercise routine is mostly the mile walk back from the child minders having dropped off my boy.

The program highlighted for me two fundamental beliefs that I adhere to. Science is essential to helping us make a better life for everyone and that one size really does not fit all.

If you didn’t see the program here is the gist:

1. Not everyone responds well to prolonged aerobic exercise, to be exact there is ~20% of the population where it does no good whatsoever.
2. A High Intensity Training regime of three 20 second burst of flat out cycling with a 20 second rest in between, three times a week is beneficial

That second one was a stunner. How can so little exercise be beneficial? Well Dr Michael Mosley, the well known TV doctor, was also skeptical. He went through it and did the scientific tests – it was shown to be beneficial.

The first one erases the myth that extended exercise at the gym will be beneficial to everyone. For twenty percent of the population it make no real difference, for another twenty percent, called super responders it makes a great deal of difference. For the other sixty percent you are somewhere in between.

The message they gave was, if you enjoy the gym, keep it up. As mentioned I don’t. I do swim periodically, I walk most days and I ride a bike every so often. Exercise for me is utilitarian. The cycling gets me from A to B, as does the walking. I’m a little stumped when it comes to the swimming unless I move to a location prone to flooding or they put a swimming lane in down Balham High Road.

The thing I took away from this intriguing program was that our exercise and fitness needs to be tailored on an individual basis: to who and what we are. One size fits all proclomations from the Government are not really that useful.

Some of these things we know or are just finding out, for example the eleven genes identified as the markers for the non-responders. Others are still to be discovered. Only time and more research grants will help us discover this. More power to the Scientists elbow I say.

Joe Molloy is a freelance technical consultant, project manager and writer, based in London, UK.

Joe helps start-ups and companies convert their vision and ideas into real world products and services. Joe specialises in helping companies get it done.

This was the launch event for the Apps for Good 2012 award winners. Held at the top of the BT Tower, it drew in a large crowd of tech folks to applaud the efforts of everyone involved.

The views from the top of the tower were great too:

All of the teams got there, which was a great start. We rode up in the lift watching the speed indicator and all getting a popping of ears part way up. We apparently were travelling at 1000 feet per minute. When I did the calculation this was only 37 mph. I suspect the indicator was on all of the social media sites by the end of the day judging by the number of camera phones out in the lift

The event space was a circle and the teams each had a market stall from which to promote their app. Their marketing ranged from stickers based on their app badges to great posters. The main marketing tactic that all of the teams had been encouraged to use was tell  a concise story about their app. Start with “Why” and move along to “How & What”.

Once we had helped them get set up, they began practising their pitches for the crowd. Each team after the opening speeches would have a two minute pitch to try and entice the visitors to their stall. The teams were very nervous, but after seeing the first pitch being given confidently, each team seemed to relax and their natural confidence began to shine through.

At one point the wireless began to play up on one side of the tower and this was a serious issue for some of the teams as their app either relied upon a Facebook login or access to back end server assistance in some way. It really brought home how few apps being developed are stand alone. For me this is not a bad thing, I just hope that the attention to detail that the development companies here have given to graceful degradation was more prevalent in the industry as a whole. To get the issue resolved I was referred to a helpful BT chap who for some reason I thought was going to retire to a patch room somewhere to fix it. Maybe it was the monolithic 60′s architecture of the tower that had me thinking this way. The helpful BT chap just flipped down a small wooden panel to reveal a BT wireless home hub that he then rebooted. Problem sorted then.

Before the event began we were shown down to the bottom of the Tower whilst it was spruced up to receive the days visitors. On our return the quiet experience of the earlier practice was swept away by a noisy hubbub of friendly banter.

The event was brought to order and kicked off by Iris and Debbie from Apps for Good. They gave way to Ian Livingstone who gave the keynote speech on the importance of coding in schools.

The teams were then invited to make their pitches and they did so with aplomb. I heard so many of the visitors either praising the speeches or being amazed that these were “just” school kids.

The fact was that by the end of the six months since they won the competition, each team has had given a vast amount of input in all parts of the app creation process. They have also been coached in marketing & presentation skills. It was therefore no surprise to me to see them confidently speaking at the event. These were now young entrepreneurs.

It was fantastic to get name checked by the teams too.

Once the speeches & pitches were finished, there followed two hours of frenetic pitching by the teams and networking by the attendees.

At the end of the launch, all of the teams and the remaining attendees gathered together for a big thank you and my six month adventure with the school teams was drawing to a close. I commented to Charlie and Chris from putITout that I was going to miss all of the visits with the teams. I’d come to know them and their teachers so well.

I was on the go so much on the day, I think I only managed to get a few bites of a slice of pizza. Once I’d left the celebratory drinks across the road with a couple of the AFG folks and developers, I retired to a local restaurant for a posh burger, chips and beer that didn’t touch the sides.

Well done one and all.

The seven apps launched were:

• Beat the Book – an app that uses gamification to encourage students to read and has been produced by a boy from St Matthews Academy with Injoit and sponsored by Nesta.
• Feelings in a Flash – a communications app that helps teenagers track, share and deal with their mood or feeling and has been created by two girls from Blackheath Computer Club with Plant Pot and sponsored by Nominet Trust.
• Mapp Your Way – app that helps students navigate their way around a large school using QR codes and was produced by five students from Wildern School with Codeten and sponsored by BlackBerry.
• Weather Birds – garden watering app that instructs users based on weather predictions and has been produced by two girls from Central Foundation Girls’ School with Fuerte International and sponsored by Thomson Reuters.
• Promise Keeper – an app that allows two parties to track commitments and has been developed by five boys from St Matthews Academy with Put It Out and sponsored by Omidyar Network.
• Oyster on the Go – proof of concept app that shows information from TFL based on an individual Oyster card and was developed by four boys from Featherstone High School with Novoda and sponsored by Barclaycard.
• RMBme – a highly customisable reminder app that uses images and has been developed by four girls from Reading Girls’ School with Service2Media and sponsored by Dell.

Joe Molloy is a freelance technical consultant, project manager and writer, based in London, UK.

Joe helps start-ups and companies convert their vision and ideas into real world products and services. Joe specialises in helping companies get it done.

Joe Molloy is a freelance technical consultant, project manager and writer, based in London, UK.

Joe helps start-ups and companies convert their vision and ideas into real world products and services. Joe specialises in helping companies get it done.

Joe Molloy is a freelance technical consultant, project manager and writer, based in London, UK.

Joe helps start-ups and companies convert their vision and ideas into real world products and services. Joe specialises in helping companies get it done.