HELLO AGAIN, WORLD

I think I've made one too many Hello World posts...

Figured I'd re-purpose this old blog into a personal hodge-podge of tech opinions, rants, raves, and whatever else is interesting at the time being. I used to just blog about whatever I was doing at UNT. Well now I will blog about all sorts of random stuff. There may be some Android, there may be some product reviews, there may be some Denton life stuff, who knows?

In the mean time, here's a picture of my phone and all it's battery hogging goodness. I have 4 batteries for this phone. Interestingly enough, I've rarely had to swap out batteries. The Galaxy S3 is much better with its battery life than my old Epic 4G, or even worse, my HTC Hero *Shudders. But knowing that I have some backup battery life is some peace of mind worth having. I never really know if I'll be in Plano, Addison, Denton, Fort Worth... Being out and about so often really lends itself to this battery conundrum, which I've found carrying an extra battery in my man purse really helps alleviate.

Blogger App

So today I found google's blogger app. Since I'm always glued to my phone, I figured it'd be easier to write up my posts if I could at least START writing them while on my phone. It's also pretty fast since I've got the whole swype keyboard thing. Since my laptop is up and running now, here's a video of me typing with
Swype!

Ok I give up on debut video capture.I've switched to Snagit. Anyway, it's just a video of me writing with swype. It's pretty fast and I have minimal complaints about the keyboard. It's nice to have the voice to speech while driving as well. I don't really know what else to say so I guess I'll stop now. I guess it is worth mentioning that typing on swype requires all your attention, so it's annoying while walking or driving, but that's why my phone has a physical keyboard as well. I love physical keyboards. Wow the whole video turned sideways that's interesting.

Also, here's a picture of my laptop:

Notice the neat custom made sticker my friend made for me!
Speaking of apps, NPR had a segment recently about the unemployment rate. They said the united states has dropped to 8.5 unemployment, and that the numbers fluctuate for certain fields. Interestingly enough, job postings with the word "android" in it have doubled since this time last year, and that the unemployment for computer science is a mere 5%. 5% by the way, is considered full employment!

NewToy Lecture at Discovery Park

You may have heard of a game called Words with Friends. It's a scrabble-esque game for the iPlatform where two players slowly take turns playing through a game. The game could take hours, days, or weeks, and that's the beauty of always connected hardware and a turn based game such as this. It's one of those games you can play in your 4 minutes of spare time while in line at the cafe, bored at home, or while listening to the NewToy lecture (hehe). Words with Friends has been a top grossing iPhone app for just about as long as it's been on the app store.

"Toy Maker" Vijay Thakkar, developer at NewToy, came to lecture at Discovery Park to prospective Mobile device programmers to give some insight on what it's like to develop for mobile platforms.

"The average age people get their first cell phones nowadays is 8" Vijay explained, "with 35% of 8 year olds owning a cell phone." Clearly mobile devices is an exponentially growing field. Vijay goes on to explain that since smart phones are basically a compass, game system, camera, newspaper, laptop, and gps (oh yeah and a phone, too) all in one, it's no wonder mobile phones are on the up-swing.

One thing Vijay hit on was the vast differences between programming on a mobile device as compared to traditional computers. He said one thing you have to concentrate on is getting the core idea of your "app" developed 100%, and that your app should be able to perform it's core functionality all day, all night 24/7 with no problems. Even if that core feature is something very basic like make farting noises, parse XML, or run a scrabble game engine, your app should be able to perform that activity with 0 flaws. Traditionally, computer programmers have focused on developing full-fledged programs that can do A-Z but not necessarily be able to perform functions F, P, and Q very well. It's especially straining on a small development team or on a team with limited financial resources. With the ideology of developing the core function 100%, releasing, and building from there, your development time is cut in half and your users can provide feedback in order to shape the future of your project. In addition, if users reject your idea all together, you'll have saved that much more time in development whereas you would have spent all that time developing a full fledged app for nothing.

Needless to say, a lot more was said during his lecture, but I don't have enough space, time, or patience to share it all. There are, of course, many lectures held at Discovery Park outside of regular course work, and this was just one of them.

Oh and I felt like a tool for asking, but I got a picture with him specifically for this blog entry x)

Cool cats. Shame I didn't get a shirt EDIT 12-8-2010: My mobile dev teacher Dr. Garlick was gracious enough to give me a shirt. Thanks!!