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Indie+Relief an Amazing Success!
Jan 22nd
Many congrats to everyone who participated in Indie+Relief. Over $143,872 was raised for the people of Haiti through various charities!
The Awesomeness That Is Bodega
Jan 17th
Let’s get one thing out of the way first thing: I’m a big fan of Bodega and have been since I heard about it firsthand from the guys at centrix.ca during WWDC 2009.
Bodega is a free Mac application that helps you discover and download Mac applications. It is built in the spirit of great software sites like MacUpdate, but takes the experience and puts a great looking Cocoa wrapper around it. Make no mistake, this project is a big undertaking with a lot of moving parts and a lot of coordination between those parts. Yet with steady progress and determination these guys are really crafting something cool.
The impetus for this particular blog post is to gush about what I think is Bodega’s killer feature: keeping track of and installing updates for the applications installed on your computer. I really like Andy Matuschack’s Sparkle framework, but one of the necessary evils of that framework is that it doesn’t notify you that there is an update for a particular app until you run that app. When I launch an application it is done with the intention of performing a task immediately, but if there’s an update for that particular app I am yanked out of my workflow to deal with the question of updating the app first. Yes, I can continue to work, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking about how I don’t have the latest version of the software that I am currently using, and it bugs me.
Enter Bodega. Once every few weeks I will launch Bodega and click on the Applications section in its sidebar which presents me with a list of all the software currently installed on my system*. The killer feature is that Bodega scans all of the Sparkle feeds in these apps and will tell me if there’s an update for any of them. With two clicks (one to download and one to install) I can download and install any of the updates that I want. This simple process greatly reduces the chance that the next time I launch an app I will be presented with the option to download and install an update, Bodega has already taken care of it for me.
If you haven’t downloaded Bodega yet I highly recommend that you do and take it for a spin. If you’re a developer and you haven’t submitted your software to Bodega, I highly recommend that you do that too.
Downloading and installing updates (Stolen shamelessly from the Bodega website)
* Bodega is opt-in for developers, so if a developer hasn’t submitted their software to the Bodega site it won’t know about that software on your computer.
Indie+Relief
Jan 17th
For those that may not have heard, Justin Williams has organized a great effort to provide financial relief to the people of Haiti. Set to take place throughout the day on January 20th, all the proceeds from the sale of participating software will be donated to Haiti. We here at No Thirst Software are participating with sales of MoneyWell and Debt Quencher. For a full list of participating software please check out the Indie+Relief website.
It’s a great cause and I know that I will be checking the list for software that’s on my “to buy” list. I suggest that you do the same.
iPhone Memory Debugging with NSZombie and Instruments
Jan 15th
NSZombie is easily one of the most valuable tools in any Cocoa developer’s toolbox. Check out Mark’s blog for a great introduction on using NSZombie from within Instruments:
iPhone Memory Debugging with NSZombie and Instruments | markjnet.
Thanks to Jeff LaMarche for directing me to Mark’s blog in the first place.
A Successful git Branching Model
Jan 14th
Being a bit of a git newbie I found the following post very useful in setting up our DVCS model. The graphic that leads of the post is a bit intimidating but it all comes together very well after reading through the post. I highly recommend this post to anyone that uses git in a team environment.
Friday Q&A: NSNotificationQueue
Jan 8th
Mike Ash exposes another Cocoa gem this week with his explanation of NSNotificationQueue.
You can read about it here: http://www.mikeash.com/?page=pyblog/friday-qa-2010-01-08-nsnotificationqueue.html
Bottom Bars in Interface Builder
Dec 18th
Dave posts a handy tip for those that may not know that there’s a non-code way of setting up the bottom bars on your windows. Check it out here: Bottom Bars in Interface Builder – Dave Dribin’s Blog.
Sportsbook 1.0 Available Now on the App Store
Oct 21st
My first iPhone app, Sportsbook, is now available on the App Store. In the coming weeks I’ll be posting some new material here that I learned during development, but for now I just want to get the word out there.
You should download Sportsbook from the App Store here: Sportsbook
Many thanks to Brett Nyquist for the user interface design and Mitch Bartlett for the icon and logo design.
Core Data Code Generation
Sep 9th
Bill Dudney has a great post about using categories to avoid some of the work when generating and regenerating classes from your Core Data model. Read about it on his blog, PrEV, here: Core Data Code Generation.
Your New Friends: Obj-C Associated Objects
Aug 28th
Andy Matuschak has posted a little-known feature of the Objective-C API under Snow Leopard on his blog. I can’t think of a use for associated objects at the moment, but there’s a good chance that I will need them in the future. You can read about them at his blog: Square Signals : Your New Friends: Obj-C Associated Objects.
