No I don’t want to install your stupid hamstrung iPad App, I want your web-site

Posted on by
2

I saw a tweet along those lines the other day (sorry can’t remember who) and it really struck a chord. These “please install our App” pop-ups are infuriating in general on both Android and iOS. Every single vbulletin site I have gone to recently has done it. Why the hell would I want a separate App for every damned site I visit?

But yesterday was the new nadir with Dropbox. Not only do you get the pop-up, they won’t let you visit information/download pages for any other platform on the iPad, they just auto-re-direct you to the iPad page!!

For fucks sake Dropbox, I wanted to read what was involved in installing on a Linux server. Do I really need to use a desktop to read that page?

This finally revealed a very good reason for jailbreaking your iPad – you get a User-Agent Switcher and can pretend you are running Firefox on the Desktop. Also handy for those stupid sites who want to force a dumbed-down mobile web-site on you.

Piss-poor reduced functionality Apps are the scourge of iOS and Android. Last weekend I ended up uninstalling the iPad Facebook App and now use the website in Safari just so I can have a goddammed Share button.

If you develop on Twitter APIs in Ireland, you have to attend Dublin Teatime

Posted on by
Reply

I attended the first London Twitter Teatime back in October. It was an organisational disaster but an absolute must-not-miss. We were in a big room with not just some key Twitter technical people but also with many of the key third party developers in the UK including the DataSift and PeerIndex guys.

The Q&A session was particularly good with no-one being too shy about asking the hard questions (*cough* Twitter Annotations).

Big congrats to Donal Cahalane and the guys here for announcing Twitter Dublin Teatime. If there is one thing you can be sure of with Donal involved, the event will kick ass.

Given the burst of activity around Twitter here in the past 24 months, there are going to be some amazing people to talk to on the night.

All details over on Web2Ireland.org and sign-up on Twitter. Numbers are limited, and given that London was jammed, I’d sign-up right now if I was you.

See ya there.

App Inventor early access to educators with current and pending courses

Posted on by
Reply

Are you teaching App Inventor in a course this Spring, or beginning a course soon? Then you are eligible to apply for early access to the experimental version of App Inventor at the MIT Center for Mobile Learning. Apply by filling out the form at: http://bit.ly/MitEarly

via Early access to educators with current and pending courses! | App Inventor Edu.

This crap is why people infringe copyright

Posted on by
7

A few weeks back, Leonard Cohen’s new album was pre-announced and I went to the “Leonard Cohen Global Store” to buy it. They had a special offer of an extra free track available for download immediatelyif you pre-ordered the MP3s. Which I duly did.

Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t find a link to download the free track anywhere but I wasn’t that bothered and waited for the album to be released.

I was very disappointed to realise that the Global Store is just a front for Sony Music. So unlike Louis CK, Lenny is only getting a tiny fraction of the money I paid. Given his huge global fan-base I hope he switches to the direct model for the next album and makes the money he is due.

Finally on Monday the album was released and I was sent a link.

The link let me download the free track. No amount of clicking would show me the album. This was followed by to-and-froing of emails with Sony where they were straight-up about the fact that the store was broken. Eventually I was sent a link to this:

Yep, I had to click one song at a time. Also, check out the fantastic layout in Chrome. I was surprised I didn’t see a “Best viewed in Internet Explorer 5 or Netscape Navigator 2.0″ in the footer.

So it took a week to download something legally or I could have spent 2 minutes being naughty. Actually the ideal for everyone would be that I pay the money and then I go to a dodgy site to get what I need.

Sony, EMI and the other dinosaurs need to spend less money hiring lawyers and more money hiring developers, UX designers and people who understand 21st century business models. Otherwise they will be gone the way of the East India Company in the next 3 years. Tick tock.