In the great debate between Apple hardware and Hackintosh’d systems, I would have to say yes.  I have been going round and round trying to get OSX 10.5.6 loaded on my Dell XPS M1330 lately and it is just not fun.  I got OSX 10.5.5 installed and working with my wireless network, but I could not properly shutdown, sleep, or reboot the machine.  I also didn’t seem to have sound.

Finally after trying to get it running again to start playing around with a new SDK for an upcoming mobile platform, I gave up.

So…

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Some of my favorite desktop apps are open source or web based. GIMP, Pidgin, x-chat all get used on a daily basis.  Why should we settle for all these different proprietary SDK models that require us to have a certain operating system to develop on.  These last couple weeks I’ve explored getting started with the iPhone SDK, and the .NET SDK for developing for Windows Mobile.  Honestly . . . Apple and Microsoft have missed the bus.

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse with this java thing, but HTML and JavaScript are well established programming standards.  The fine folks over at PhoneGap have put together another tool using HTML and Java to develop apps not just for the iPhone, but for the Android, Blackberry, and most definitely coming soon Pre.

Twitter seems like it is becoming more and more popular these days.  Many site now have their own Twitter accounts that let you follow them and get notified when they update the site.  We are currently doing that and you can follow the Appdots site at http://www.twitter.com/appdots.

In addition to the site Twitter account, Justin and I can both be found on Twitter with our personal accounts.  You can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/brettq.  I will let Justin share his Twitter account later.  The reason we run both personal and site Twitter accounts is because a lot of people do not like their Twitter feeds to look just like a RSS news feed.  There are a lot of accounts out in the twitterverse that do nothing but put out notifications when a new article is posted.  This is what our Appdots account is currently doing on Twitter.  On the other hand, I use my personal account for a wide variety of things and I also usually retweet notices from Appdots.  We will be using the Appdots site for more content in the future and for possible contests, so it is worth it to keep it on follow just in case!

As for Twitter on the go, I am currently using a Palm Treo Pro as my daily driver device and am using PockeTwit as my Twitter client.  I also use Tweetie on my iPhone, which I think is still the best Twitter application on any platform, including PC/OSX.   There is a lot of room for polished Twitter applications on pretty much every platform, so if social networking is your thing, why not start coding the next great Twitter app?

[Image via PockeTwit]

Do you sit down and hit the books, studying every aspect of the project at hand?  Do you find some good blog posts that give you a rough outline of what you want to do?  Do you learn more from trial and error?

Post some comments about what tools you use to learn and stay competitive.

…to bloat up a perfectly good phone. AT&T announced that they are finally going to be selling the Nokia E71x, their locked down version of the Nokia E71. The good thing about this is that it’s a S60 device on a major US carrier, which doesn’t seem to happen much. The bad thing about this is that when a carrier (at least in the US) gets a hold of a sleek new device that runs great, they love to add all of their extra crap to slow the device down and try to persuade users to buy their Java games and apps through their “app store”.

I absolutely hate this practice and believe that when you first boot the phone up, you should have an opt-out choice. Most of the stuff that may be useful is available to the general public anyway, so it’s not like the carriers are doing anything but stealing device memory (which you most likely cannot reclaim) and infecting your phone with trial-ware and other crap that you will never need.

What else was removed?

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I have used lots of different devices over the years.  One day I may actually try to list them out, but even then I am bound to miss a few.  I have used devices from Palm, HP, Compaq, RIM, Apple, HTC, Motorola, and Saumsung in just about every form factor available.

The main lesson I have learned from all of these devices is that I like buttons.  I like buttons that can be remapped.  I like the buttons even more if they can be mapped with both a press and hold action.  I like devices that have a physical keyboard (lots of buttons) that allow you to launch programs from the keyboard.

On my Treo Pro, I have the button on the left setup so that when I press it, it emulates Alt-Tab so that I can easily swap between applications that are running at the time.  This one button saves me countless other button presses or touches on the screen and saves a lot of time.

I really really like buttons.  Now, time to find the buttons on the coffee pot.

Last weekend I went out to watch some March Madness and drink a few beers.  One of the people that was supposed to show up with her boyfriend was running late.  Other people were getting worried, and to make a long story shorter, it ended up being because she doesn’t text and drive.  I had to say I admire her for being one of the few people who takes into consideration safety while driving.  A conversation took place later talking about how voice recognition software had been around since the 90’s with Dragon Natural Speaking, and how great it would be to have a program that would do voice recognition text messaging.

A quick search for voice recognition and SMS provided some results, but the most words per minute I found was 20.  I admit, most text messages I send are less than 20 words, but wow does that seem like a low number?  Anyways back to the morning joe.

I enjoy listening to the NPR station in my area on the way in to the 8-5 in the morning, and this morning they had a piece that particularly interested me.  Some mad scientists over at UCLA had hacked together a Sony Ericsson to run blood tests out in remote  third world areas.

The results of the blood sample get compared against a database to determine if the patient is infected.  This thing isn’t even a smart phone!  Obama wants to bring medical costs down; Invest in technologies like this.  You will see people flocking from misdiagnosing themselves with WebMD to getting highly accurate test results.

After listening to this broadcast, I couldn’t help thinking of any running sci-fi series where they had a handheld device to automatically scan the sick or hurt individual on the fly.  Is this the beginning of that kind of technology?  As medical research pushes the envelope of this technology, there is going to be a whole host of new applications to write and the possibilities are limitless.

Now that we are getting into the era of Web 2.0, what do developers need to do to adapt?

I have been seeing an increasing number of developers on Twitter and Facebook.  One of the neatest things is to comment about a piece of software on Twitter only to have the actual developer of the software reply.  I think this is a really great tool for developers.  I have been using TweetBeep lately to track keywords and domains that people post on Twitter.  You will receive an email with the tweets that include the keywords.

This is a good way to keep track of what people are saying about your applications or company in the age of Web 2.0.

Where do your ideas come from?

The hardest thing in the world to do is to sit down and try to think of something new and exciting.  What is it that inspires programmers to write software?  I know for some it’s the wind between their cheeks, but for the apps that are actually useful what is it that lit the bulb?

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