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About Me
I'm Michael Koby, and I love technology. I'm also a programmer, currently doing Ruby on Rails development for a small Houston startup. Here I talk about technology, programming, politics, movies, music, and anything else I feel I need to talk about. If you would like to know more, you can check out the About page.Popular Series
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Category Archives: Technology
Got a Kindle
Yep, I broke down and finally bought a Kindle. The latest generation of the Kindle just finally sold me on getting one. The price was right, and the recent changes to the overall design were nice too. Why did I get a Kindle over the “magical” Apple iPad? One reason, I wanted a device specifically for reading. Sure you can read books on the iPad, but it’s a brightly lit LCD screen, plus the iPad is a little weighty. The iPad is a nice device for what it is, but for something to read long term on, it really isn’t up to snuff. I wanted to read books and I wanted it to have a true page like feel to what I was looking at. Continue reading
Google Instant Search
Google released Instant Search earlier this week. It’s a pretty spiffy piece of technology, if you’re logged into your Google account and go to the Google search page, and start typing in a search, the screen will shift to show you results in an almost real time manner. Over the last few days, you hear a lot of tech pundits talking about how Google wasted it’s time, because no one uses the Google search page anymore, they use the search bar in their browser. So Google has spent time on a problem that doesn’t really exist.
I disagree. Continue reading
Rotation Cipher – My First Android App
Over the 3 day weekend I decided I was going to write a simple Android application to publish to the Android App Market to find out a few things. First, I wanted to see if I could do it, write an app with some kind of simple functionality quickly. Secondly, I wanted to see what the process for publishing to the Android App Market was like. We hear all the time about how Apple disapproves apps, and kicks apps out of the market (sometimes almost, it would seem, randomly). Continue reading
Posted in mobile apps, programming, Rotation Cipher, Technology
Tagged android, mobile apps
2 Comments
Why Ignore Some Mobile Platforms?
My question is, why would you ignore an obvious, growing sector of the mobile market? Yes, I understand that right now, Apple has the store that has on numerous occasions made people millions for simple applications. However, that doesn’t mean that the Android Marketplace or Windows Phone 7 Marketplace will not make you any money. Continue reading
Posted in Commentary, Technology
Tagged android, Apple, Google, iphone, Microsoft, windows phone 7
2 Comments
Seesmic for iPhone
It had to happen eventually. Twitter for iPhone (previously known as Tweetie 2) is one of the best Twitter apps for the iPhone. It’s jammed packed with features but with some really nice UI elements that don’t give you that … Continue reading
Google, Android, and Open Source
Google announced that they would be holding back with regards to releasing the latest version of the Android operating system. The release in question, Android 3.0 aka Honeycomb aka the version for tablets. The reasoning for this they say is two fold: 1) the code isn’t ready to be released to the public, and 2) they don’t want manufacturers attempting to put Honeycomb on smaller form factor devices (read “mobile phones”).
Then Google announced today that they were going to tighten the requirements on releasing Android based products. More specifically they were going to enforce the clause in their licensing agreement (the one that allows companies to use the “with Google” tag on their devices like the recently released Motorola Xoom) that the devices must meet certain standards and certain objectives must be met.
I want to look at both of these things in this article, because they kind of go hand in hand. Continue reading →