Cloud Lasso

Barking Minds Software and Crowd Map

Daniel Dosen — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:18:41 +0000

Take a look over at barkingminds.com – Another “mini/micro-company” like App Weekend designed to efficiently put together and run with minimal overhead and governance. I personally believe it’s more the way of the future, and it will be fostered by those of us looking to direct our lives towards areas we want to focus. The purpose of Barking Minds is to build great apps! Check it out at crowdmap.barkingminds.com… And check it out in our apps section of Cloud Lasso.

Dan and Brian make up two thirds of the development team of the app that:

- is a Universal iPhone and iPad app

- connects to a Ruby backend over RESTful services

- allows for real time mind-mapping collaboration on devices – like Google Wave or SubethaEdit.

Apps

Daniel Dosen — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:14:45 +0000

SURF iPhone and Android Incubator: Upcoming events and a strong initial Meetup

Brian Gershon — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:38:06 +0000

There was a nice turnout of around 40 people at the SURF Incubator on Wednesday Jan 13th.

There were really three events being held at the same time:

SURF Open House
SURF iPhone Coding Night Meetup
and a last minute merge of the “iPhone App Developers” Meetup

The merging of events ultimately created a room full of interesting and engaged people who were networking and discussing mobile app development.

I would say that most were there to network, and some were there to play with code.

The networkers were a nice mix of entrepreneurs and people looking for iPhone developers. The coders were mainly new developers (and some graphic designers) that were getting into iPhone or Android development. The coding part of the session ended up very light because the event took on more of a networking feel.

The Open House event was an active Q&A session for those interested in the incubator, upcoming plans, and how to get involved.

Jeff Yochim, Brian Gershon, Dan Dosen. Photo by Seaton Gras.

I personally made some new connections, reconnected with other iPhone developers and designers, and met people who I hadn’t run across yet at other iPhone events. The feeling was that there was pent up demand for iPhone networking and coding.

More about SURF Incubator

The SURF space is available as a location for people to collaborate and work on code together — open every weekday during January. The space is also available for other iPhone / Android events. There are desks for people to pair up or meet in groups as well. The plan is to ultimately host many events and activities, and there is also permanent space for developers and those building businesses. This month is the Open House so people can start to explore and use the space. http://surfincubator.com

The recent events have been geared toward iPhone, but the SURF Incubator will also host Android events. This would open up opportunities to create synergies between the two platforms.

Have feedback?

There is also a new IdeaScale portal for people to post feedback to at http://surfincubator.ideascale.com

Upcoming Meetup Events at SURF

The “Seattle iPhone & Android Incubator” Meetup is an umbrella for upcoming workshops and coding sessions at SURF.
- The plan it to have host regular coding sessions/workshops around specific themes and experience levels.
- Please join this Meetup for a calendar of upcoming events.
- On Monday, there will be a Beginner iPhone SDK Xcode – Q & A Discussion Meetup.
- These events would also complement the existing NSCoder group by adding an additional location for those that can’t make it to the University Village Zoka event.
The “iPhone App Developers” Meetup hosted by Andrew will be located at SURF Incubator. I haven’t attended this Meetup, but it looks to be a nice opportunity for networking.

More iPhone-related events

We’re fortunate to have many opportunities to meet and code in Seattle.

XCoders — which offer a presentation, post-meeting networking at Luau, and an active email list. There are two meetings per month: One in Seattle and one on the east side. http://www.seattlexcoders.org/
NSCoder Night — meets each Tuesdays at University Village Zoka in Seattle. http://nscodernight.com/?cat=28

Welcome to Cloud Lasso!

Daniel Dosen — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:31:25 +0000

We’ll be publishing to Cloud Lasso via syndication for several locations. Check back soon!

Welcome to Cloud Lasso’s Cargo Pants Pocket Software Syndication…

Daniel Dosen — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:28:44 +0000

We’ll be syndicating our partner blogs up to Cloud Lasso Consulting, LLC – you can follow us here, or on the blogs of Cloud Lasso’s different partners.

Log4Cocoa in an iPhone Project

Jeremy Przasnyski — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 23:52:32 +0000

My background is J2EE and one of the things that has been bugging me about the iPhone platform is that nobody seems to care about logging. When you have a complicated application with many layers and subsystems, it is very handy to be able to turn on and off logging for different sections of code.

Log4J is pretty much the industry standard implementation of the commons logging framework for Java. It allows you to have hierarchical logging categories that turn on/off logging at various levels (info,warn,error, etc). There’s a Cocoa port called log4cocoa, but I couldn’t find any documentation describing how to get it to work in an iPhone project.

Here are the steps I took to get log4cocoa to work in my projects

Create a New View-based Application Project

Check out log4cocoa and Custom Categories

Check out log4cocoa:
svn co https://log4cocoa.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/log4cocoa/trunk log4cocoa

A log4cocoa/lib3rd A log4cocoa/lib3rd/OCMock.tgz A log4cocoa/Log4Cocoa_Prefix.pch A log4cocoa/source A log4cocoa/source/L4StringMatchFilter.h A log4cocoa/source/L4LevelRangeFilter.h A log4cocoa/source/L4LevelMatchFilter.h A log4cocoa/source/L4RollingFileAppender.m A log4cocoa/source/L4LoggerStore.h A log4cocoa/source/L4SimpleLayout.m A log4cocoa/source/L4LoggingEvent.m A log4cocoa/source/L4DenyAllFilter.h A log4cocoa/source/L4FileAppender.h A log4cocoa/source/L4StringMatchFilter.m A log4cocoa/source/L4LevelRangeFilter.m A log4cocoa/source/L4LevelMatchFilter.m A log4cocoa/source/L4LoggerStore.m A log4cocoa/source/L4FileAppender.m A log4cocoa/source/L4AppenderProtocols.h A log4cocoa/source/L4AppenderSkeleton.h A log4cocoa/source/L4DenyAllFilter.m A log4cocoa/source/L4BasicConfigurator.h A log4cocoa/source/L4PropertyConfigurator.h A log4cocoa/source/L4AppenderAttachable.h A log4cocoa/source/L4Level.h A log4cocoa/source/L4AppenderSkeleton.m A log4cocoa/source/L4BasicConfigurator.m A log4cocoa/source/L4PatternLayout.h A log4cocoa/source/L4PropertyConfigurator.m A log4cocoa/source/L4AppenderAttachable.m A log4cocoa/source/L4Level.m A log4cocoa/source/L4Layout.h A log4cocoa/source/L4PatternLayout.m A log4cocoa/source/L4ConsoleAppender.h A log4cocoa/source/L4Layout.m A log4cocoa/source/L4LogLog.h A log4cocoa/source/L4LoggerProtocols.h A log4cocoa/source/L4Filter.h A log4cocoa/source/L4ConsoleAppender.m A log4cocoa/source/L4Logging.h A log4cocoa/source/L4LogLog.m A log4cocoa/source/L4Filter.m A log4cocoa/source/L4Logging.m A log4cocoa/source/L4WriterAppender.h A log4cocoa/source/L4Properties.h A log4cocoa/source/L4WriterAppender.m A log4cocoa/source/L4Properties.m A log4cocoa/source/L4DailyRollingFileAppender.h A log4cocoa/source/Log4CocoaDefines.h A log4cocoa/source/Log4Cocoa.h A log4cocoa/source/Tests A log4cocoa/source/Tests/TestL4StringMatchFilter.m A log4cocoa/source/Tests/TestL4LevelMatchFilter.m A log4cocoa/source/Tests/TestL4LevelRangeFilter.m A log4cocoa/source/Tests/TestL4PatternLayout.m A log4cocoa/source/Tests/TestL4Properties.m A log4cocoa/source/Tests/TestL4DenyAllFilter.m A log4cocoa/source/Tests/data A log4cocoa/source/Tests/data/test.properties A log4cocoa/source/L4DailyRollingFileAppender.m A log4cocoa/source/NSObject+Log4Cocoa.h A log4cocoa/source/L4Logger.h A log4cocoa/source/NSObject+Log4Cocoa.m A log4cocoa/source/L4RootLogger.h A log4cocoa/source/L4Logger.m A log4cocoa/source/L4RollingFileAppender.h A log4cocoa/source/L4SimpleLayout.h A log4cocoa/source/L4LoggingEvent.h A log4cocoa/source/L4RootLogger.m A log4cocoa/xcconfig A log4cocoa/xcconfig/Release.xcconfig A log4cocoa/xcconfig/ReleaseLeopardOrLater.xcconfig A log4cocoa/xcconfig/FrameworkTigerOrLater.xcconfig A log4cocoa/xcconfig/Application.xcconfig A log4cocoa/xcconfig/TigerOrLater.xcconfig A log4cocoa/xcconfig/Debug.xcconfig A log4cocoa/xcconfig/DebugLeopardOrLater.xcconfig A log4cocoa/xcconfig/Coverage.xcconfig A log4cocoa/xcconfig/CoverageLeopardOrLater.xcconfig A log4cocoa/xcconfig/Framework.xcconfig A log4cocoa/xcconfig/General.xcconfig A log4cocoa/xcconfig/LeopardOrLater.xcconfig A log4cocoa/xcconfig/Unittest.xcconfig A log4cocoa/TODO.txt A log4cocoa/demo A log4cocoa/demo/AppController.m A log4cocoa/demo/main.m A log4cocoa/demo/Log4CocoaDemo-Info.plist A log4cocoa/demo/LoggingThread.h A log4cocoa/demo/log4cocoa.properties A log4cocoa/demo/LoggingThread.m A log4cocoa/demo/AppController.h A log4cocoa/demo/English.lproj A log4cocoa/demo/English.lproj/InfoPlist.strings A log4cocoa/demo/English.lproj/MainMenu.xib A log4cocoa/Info.plist A log4cocoa/Tests-Info.plist A log4cocoa/doc A log4cocoa/doc/Doxyfile A log4cocoa/COPYRIGHT.txt A log4cocoa/Log4Cocoa.xcodeproj A log4cocoa/Log4Cocoa.xcodeproj/treaves.pbxuser A log4cocoa/Log4Cocoa.xcodeproj/eric.perspectivev3 A log4cocoa/Log4Cocoa.xcodeproj/treaves.mode1v3 A log4cocoa/Log4Cocoa.xcodeproj/treaves.mode2v3 A log4cocoa/Log4Cocoa.xcodeproj/eric.pbxuser A log4cocoa/Log4Cocoa.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj A log4cocoa/Log4Cocoa.xcodeproj/treaves.perspectivev3 A log4cocoa/readme.txt A log4cocoa/English.lproj A log4cocoa/English.lproj/InfoPlist.strings U log4cocoa Checked out revision 111.

Check out my category for NSDate to make int compliant with the missing NSCalendarDate:
git clone git://github.com/jeremyprz/categories.git

Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/jeremy/dev/sandbox/L4C-iPhone/categories/.git/ remote: Counting objects: 16, done. Receiving objects: 100% (16/16), done.ceiving objects: 6% (1/16) remote: Compressing objects: 100% (13/13), done. remote: Total 16 (delta 7), reused 7 (delta 3) Resolving deltas: 100% (7/7), done.

Add Empty Source Groups to your Project

One for ‘Categories’
Another for ‘Log4Cocoa’

‘Add > Existing Files…’ to the Categories Group

Add existing files to the Categories group by selecting the categories/NSDate-Calendar.* files.

‘Add > Existing Files…’ to the Log4Cocoa Group

Add existing files to the Categories group by selecting the log4cocoa/source/*.* files.

Modify _Prefix.pch File

You will need to add a single line to your project’s .pch file. In this project, the file is named ‘L4C_iPhone_Prefix.pch’. We are adding a single line to the file: #import "NSDate-Calendar.h"
This line will ensure that the unmodified log4cocoa files will our NSDate category instead of the NSCalendarDate, which is not available on the iPhone.

Add Log4Cocoa Code to the Application

At this point, your project should be fully able to use log4cocoa. Here is the plain vanilla AppDelegate from this example: #import "L4C_iPhoneAppDelegate.h" #import "L4C_iPhoneViewController.h" #import "Log4Cocoa.h"


@implementation L4C_iPhoneAppDelegate
@synthesize window;

@synthesize viewController;
- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application {    
    // Override point for customization after app launch

    [window addSubview:viewController.view];

    [window makeKeyAndVisible];
	[[L4Logger rootLogger] setLevel:[L4Level all]];

	[[L4Logger rootLogger] addAppender: [[L4ConsoleAppender alloc]

										 initTarget:YES

										 withLayout:[L4Layout simpleLayout]]];

	L4Logger *theLogger = [L4Logger loggerForClass:[L4FunctionLogger class]];

	[theLogger setLevel:[L4Level debug]];

	log4CDebug(@"The logging system has been initialized.");

}
- (void)dealloc {

    [viewController release];

    [window release];

    [super dealloc];

}

@end

Run your App

You should now be able to run the application and see log4cocoa output in the console.

MeasureMe v1.2 Release

robertmhoehn — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:41:13 +0000

We’re very proud to finally track down the worst of the MeasureMe bugs and be able to submit MeasureMe v1.2 to the iTunes App Store. Highlights:

Fix stability issues with some first generation iPhones
Fully leveraging OS 3.0 API to further increase stability

MeasureMe v1.1 Release

Jeremy Przasnyski — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:45:02 +0000

We’re proud to release v1.1 of MeasureMe. Highlights include:

1) Now building against 3.0 OS APIs

2) Stability improvments that prevent crashing

3) Performance enhancements that increase performance of ruler, date bar, and load times for user screens.

IdeaScale Cocoa Widget

Jeremy Przasnyski — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:41:31 +0000

One thing that seems to be lacking with a lot of mobile applications is the ability to easily collect feedback quickly an easily. Most of the feedback solutions we’ve seen involves leaving the app to go to a website – not exactly the smoothest user experience.

Thats why Cavoort teamed up with IdeaScale.com to build a simple cocoa widget that allows any iPhone app to easily collect crowdsourced feedback. Once enabled, your users can leave suggestions for new ideas or report bugs right within the app – preserving the user experience.

If you’d like to add the feedback widget to your iPhone app, take a look at instructions here, or contact us if you have additional questions.