iMac Updates

Let’s start off with the iMac. They still have the 21.5 and 27 inch models, but they both got some new hardware.

The base line 21.5 inch iMac has a new 3.06GHz Core i3 processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 500GB hard drive, and has one of ATI’s Radeon 4670 with 256MB vRam. Apple also updated the the higher end 21.5 inch iMac ($1,499). They still have the Core i3 processors but instead of 3.06GHz, it’s now clocked to 3.20GHz. Apple also upgraded the hard drive to 1TB and the graphics to the ATI Radeon 5670 variety.

The $1,699 27 inch iMac has the same guts as the higher end 21.5 inch iMac, but the 27 inch model is upgradeable to a 3.6GHz Core i5, 2TB hard drive, a 256GB SSD and 16GB of DDR3 RAM. The highest end 27 inch iMac now has a 2.8GHz quad-core i5, ATI Radeon HD 5750 GPU with 1GB of vRAM, 1TB hard drive and upgradeable to a Core i7, 2TB hard drive, 256 GB SSD, and up to 16GB of RAM.

Mac Pro Updates

Possibly the most substantial update has to be the Mac Pro. Apple updated the Mac Pro to have 12 processing cores! (WOW!) It’s quite impressive to have that many cores, but it doesn’t come in a cheap price. If you want the 12 core Mac Pro, you’ll have to spend a whopping $5,000! Now, if you want a cheaper solution, you can still get a quad-core model for $2,499 or an 8 core model at $3,499. Apple updated the graphics card to the Radeon HD 5770, which is upgradeable to the HD 5870.

Apple does provide some good upgrades for the Mac Pro. Apple allows you to have 32GB of RAM, 4TB of storage, and a crazy option for four 512GB SSD drives!

New accessories

With all the updates out of the way, Apple made some cool accessories. Let’s take a look at them:

Magic TrackPad

The Apple Magic Trackpad is interesting. It’s basically the same glass multi-touch trackpad, but bigger. It still has the same gestures as all the Apple laptops. This product is mainly designed for desktop users. If you want this for your Apple computer, you can go get this for $69.

27 inch LED Cinema Display

The Apple 27 inch Cinema Display is no different from the 24 inch model. The new 27 inch Cinema display has a resolution of 2560×1440 and a new price of $999 Those are basically the main differences.

Apple Battery Charger… wait, what?!

Yes, you heard me, Apple is making re-chargable AA batteries. This could be the strangest thing that I’ve seen Apple to release to date. Now, Apple is pretty serious about this. Apple claims that it’s battery charger has the lowest vampire power draw than any charger on the market. You can get this thing for $29 and it will come with six AA batteries.

In this day and age, as mobile phones become more integral to out everyday lives, text entry has become important. Not only a phone could make phone calls, but sometimes, you got to get your work done. It’s usually email, typing quick notes, and texting. So, which keyboard is better than another?

Hardware keyboards

Let’s start of with most common keyboard, the portrait keyboard. Portrait keyboards are usually common on BlackBerries. These phones are a prime example of how portrait keyboards are designed. What does a portrait keyboard must have?  In a portrait keyboard, it’s crucial to have decent spacing and domed keys. The advantage of portrait keyboards are that they are good with one had usability. By all means, typing on a portrait keyboard is excellent, but there are drawbacks. When typing on a portrait keyboard, it might be a little cramped and people with large thumbs are out of luck.

Next up, landscape keyboards. Just like portrait keyboards, they must have good spacing and domed keys. But, landscape keyboards has to be slightly different due to ergonomics. They would have to be off-set, such as the HTC Touch Pro 2 or a standard computer keyboard. As you can see the Droid on the left, the keyboard is laid out in a grid, which is harder to type.

Overall, the most important thing about keyboards in general is about the tactile feedback. That’s a great advantage of physical keyboards, you can actually feel the keys pushing down.

Virtual Keyboards

For those looking for a thinner phone, there are a wide variety of touchscreen keyboards out there. The phone that made touchscreen keyboards usable is the iPhone. Today, the iPhone is still the king in touchscreen keyboards to date. What’s making it so good? Multi-touch. Multi-touch is a technology that Apple engineered, which allows you to have two fingers on a screen and will register those two fingers. Also, you can just tap the screen instead of pushing keys. This helps when you are typing quickly. That’s probably why virtual keyboards are my personal favorite. Now, not all touchscreen phones will have multitouch and those phones usually has resistive touch screens. Now, with all touchscreen phones, you get predictive text while typing. The phone will pop up a suggestion of a word that you misspelled. One thing that’s bad about these kind of keyboards is the lack of tactile feedback. Sure, there’s haptic feedback, but for some people, it’s not enough.

Conclusion

Having good text entry is necessary on any modern smartphone. There are some good options available. Some people require a hardware keyboard, while others are just as efficient on the touchscreen version. As virtual keyboards have become more usable and smarter, more people have migrated in that direction, but there is clearly still a market for the physical variety. Physical keyboards have the tactility, but cost in weight and thickness. Touchscreens can be highly adaptable, but inaccurate if poorly implemented. What do you think is the best method of text entry on a mobile device?

When it comes to a lot of those Mac applications out there, sometimes you just don’t know what to get exactly. The time when I first got my my, I already knew of all of the popular Mac applications mainly for the fact that I read so much on the internet.

The very first application I ever install would have to be my IM client, in this case, Adium (or Pidgin on the Linux/Windows side of things). Adium is very needed for me because I have many friends who live exactly halfway across the world from where I live. Because of that exact reason, it’s hard to call them (because prices are out of their whits when it comes to international phone bills; I know I could use Skype, but sometimes that internet connect isn’t the best out there either) or even e-mail them mainly because of the time differences. So any IM client is needed for me. I always need to be in contact with all of my friends worldwide; Adium is that important.

But when you think about it, what about the paid applications? Throughout my whole computer-savvy career, I’ve bought so many applications including games, tune-up apps, management apps, and even apps that help me multitask. Granted, I get a lot of my applications from programs like MacHeist or even the MacUpdate promo. I know my way around to get deals on the web.

My main question to every Mac (please, just Mac this time) owners out there is what’s your favorite or most needed piece of shareware for the Mac? For me, because I’m very into web development, I cannot stress enough on how much I like Panic’s Coda. But I realize this might be hard for some people to fork out one application they like most, so what’s your favorite multimedia, development, internet related, utilities, and even favorite game.

For me, here’s my favorites:

Multimedia: Easily Adobe Photoshop on this one. I always have that app open because I’m always working on some design work.

Development: Without a doubt, Panic’s Coda. Granted, it doesn’t serve for iPhone development, but I do love everything about it. And of course for iPhone development, I use Xcode on that one. I actually haven’t created any app for OS X yet.

Internet Related: Tweetie! Seriously, this is one of the best designed Twitter apps of all time. I would pay Twitter to make this their web interface!

Utilities: I was actually just talking about this on Twitter. My favorite Mac utility would have to be MacPaw’s CleanMyMac. Now I haven’t bought this one just yet, but I am very close to buying it.

So those are all of my favorite Mac apps! How about you share yours and maybe, just maybe, add in a few more categories than I did? I’m probably not going to buy any Mac application for quite a while now because I just forked out quite a bit of money for Coda, but I’m always willing to try new apps.

And please remember, these are for paid Mac applications. I can name so many free ones, it’s not even funny. But hopefully, with your help, we’ll get a nice list going here so people know what to buy if they want to switch over to a Mac.

Objective C (the main.m file of an iPhone app)

I’ve been developing for a number of years now. My very first programming language I tried to learn was Visual Basic .NET. As like learning anything on your own, comes hard challenges. This was the very first programming language I tried to set my hands upon.

After learning the basics of Visual Basic .NET, I basically gave up. And at that point, I started learning (X)HTML. That was easily five years ago. I learned the basics of (X)HTML, but at that point, things like CSS weren’t ever so popular.

When I was working with some other friends, I was given the oppurtunity to basically to become the “web-master”. As of today, that term means something totally different. Back then, it simply meant updating the content. Today, it means doing database work, scripting work, and even (X)HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

So when I was working with my friends with managing their websites, which at the time I completely had no prior experience to developing in any language, I really opened my eyes to a new world.

Last year, I ended up taking a computer science course that taught Visual Basic. And you know what, I aced it with flying stars. Earlier this year I took the web design course (that really only discussed the basics of (X)HTML/CSS)), aced that one too. So I can tell you right now, I have lots of experience…

But what’s probably the most important thing when developing, is how you do it. If you’re starting off at the very beginning, I can honestly say don’t expect that much because learning how to develop in any language will be tough for the first time. Once you get past that first language, it’s all quite easy because you understand how it’s supposed to work.

When I develop, I take the matter in what font I use, what syntax colors are used, the background color, and even how large the font is.

• Anytime you’re developing on a large project, it’s going to take a lot of time. Programming != writing a paper (and yes, I can throw in some programming terms to spice it up – for you new ones out there, the != is a global term that basically means “not equal to”). When you write a paper, it’s almost always on a white background with black text. But when coding, some people, like myself, prefer a black background with inverted syntax colors. When you’re looking at code for hours on end (which a typical programmer does quite often), it can just be stressful on the eyes. Many people think black is easier when coding than white. It’s a matter of preference, but just try it out.
• As from what I’ve said before, font is a huge thing when programming. On the Mac side of things, Monaco is used a lot. On the Windows side, Courier New is used quite a bit. When it comes to fonts, it’s really a matter of preference. If you want to get some idea of what font is perfect for you, go to  the Top 10 Programming Fonts to find your favorite font. Personally, my favorite font is Inconsolata at 13pt. So what’s yours?
• The last thing I really want to cover is the syntax colors. If you’re like me, you care about the colors of what’s being used for certain syntaxes. For example, when I’m coding in PHP, I like my variables to be in yellow and my <?php ?> text  to be in red. It’s a matter of preference and you can set these in almost every editor out there.

Hopefully that helps for anyone developing in any language. If you see in the image above all of this, that’s the way I personally like to develop, at least in Objective C that is.

If you have any more programming tips for us to write about, be sure to drop it in the comments below! We’ll be more than happy to hear on how you develop.

1. Simply leave it off for a day or two then try turning it back on.

2. Unplug every cord from your Playstation. Get an ordinary hand towel and damp it with hot water. Place it over your PS3 unit and leave it there for 24 hours. After the day goes by, take it off and turn it on.

3. Check for any loose cables.

4. Take out the hard drive, then put it back in. You might want to do this a couple of times for best results.

5. Reinstall the System software. This can be helpful because the YLOD also occurs when your software is corrupted.

6. Lastly, send it back to Sony. If it is still under warranty, then you might want to exchange your old system for a new one.

If all else fails, tip #6 is your last resort. I hope this helped!

-Scotty

Ok, so this has been discussed a lot! I know I’m a little late, but I just had to stress this topic. In the 15th Tech Cores podcast, Ryan and Taylor talked about the iPad killing netbooks. I am going to give my reasons how the iPad might kill the NetBook below:

Internet Browsing

The iPad web browsing experience is phenomenal. The reason why it’s so phenomenal is because you can “touch the web.” It is very smooth and fast. I experienced it myself over at Bestbuy, and I will tell you that being able to touch the web is better than clicking the web.

Writing documents

I’d have to say they are about equal on this one. A netbook has a standard keyboard that hopefully all of us have experienced before. However on the iPad, it is a touch screen keyboard. You can buy an Apple Bluetooth keyboard for $70 or the iPad keyboard with dock for $70 as well. I think the touch screen keyboard is good enough for quick documents or editing. The keyboard might take a day or two to get used to, but since the iPad has auto-correct, it will help you get used to the keyboard.

Media

Media on the iPad is going to be excellent. Watching movies on the iPad is excellent because of the it’s 9.7 inch IPS display and the built-in speakers for music playback is excellent.  Since the iPad uses iTunes, syncing your Apps, Songs, Movies, Podcasts will be simple and seamless. On a netbook, you have your iTunes and Windows Media player. Media playback on a netbook varies. It varies because the netbook lacks in powerful hardware. On some netbooks, watching  720p videos could get a little choppy. Also, since most netbooks runs Windows 7 Starter, you won’t be able to use Windows Media Center, which is the Front Row equivalent.

Games

Playing games on the iPad is great. The built-in accelerometer makes racing games more realistic, and it allows developers to make games more immerse. Also, getting games on the iPad is super simple. It’s simple because the iPad comes with a user-friendly store, which has all the available games in one native app. On a netbook, gaming performance won’t be the best because of their Atom processors and their graphics cards. Due to the lack of powerful hardware, all you can really play is memory intensive flash games or some basic solitaire. Also, installing some games requires a DVD drive, which the netbook doesn’t have. I’d say that the iPad is a better choice for gaming.

Ports

As you know, an average netbook comes with 3 USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, headphone and mic jack, VGA, and of course, the AC input. On the iPad, it has a 30 pin connector and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. Yeah it seems pretty bare bones, but Apple sells an external VGA connector for TV output, an SD card reader, and a USB adapter, but you can only connect cameras to import photos.

OS/Overall Performance

As many of you guys know, the iPad runs the iPhone OS and typical netbooks runs Windows 7 Starter. I would like to start with the iPhone OS first. The iPhone OS is a smartphone OS that’s elegant, smooth, and easy to use. I think the iPhone OS is perfect mainly because how simple it is to operates. For example, my mom doesn’t know anything about computers and she recently got an iPad. How long do you think it will take that my mom to learn it? Hmm, well, my mom learned the iPhone OS than a week. Right now, she already knows how to browse the web with one touch of an icon, view her photos, using multi-touch, and even downloading songs from the iTunes store. That’s just an example of how easy it is to operate the iPad. On to netbooks. Netbooks runs on Windows 7 Starter. Windows 7 Starter is a striped down version of Windows 7, mainly designed for netbooks. For me, the UI is easy for me, but it’s not easy for everyone. It’s not like someone can pick it up instantly or in weeks. Performance on the netbook really depends on the hardware. For some netbooks, performance is sluggish because of the Atom processor. Overall, I think the iPad wins just because of how easy the Ui is and how fast it is.

Overall Impressions

If I was in the situation where I had to choose between the iPad or a netbook, I would choose the iPad. I would never replace an iPad for a notebook, so I’m not going to go there. Anyways, the iPad has everything that I would need if I was ever a traveling person. You can get your work done, read your favorite articles online, then in the meantime you can play some games or listen to music.

Let’s start off with the Magic Mouse. The Magic Mouse is the world’s first multitouch mouse and it’s made by Apple. The Magic Mouse has a sleek and low-profile design. The Magic Mouse has a number of gestures such as the two finger swipe for going back or forward on a webpage. If you are a person that’s picky on ergonomics or a gamer, this mouse is defiantly not for you. This mouse costs $69 and it’s Mac only.

Next is the Microsoft Arc Mouse. This mouse has a stylish design and an ergonomic curve. The reason why it’s called Arc is because it has an arch style of design. If you fold the mouse, it will be significantly more portable and smaller. Overall, I think this is a great mouse if you’re always traveling and want an executive item. This retails for $49 and it comes in many other colors than matte black.

Next, I’ll be talking about the Logitech Performance MX. The Performance MX has a really ergonomic design and has a couple programable buttons. This mouse has Logitech’s hyper scroll wheel. This scroll wheel allows you to scroll long documents rapidly and if you don’t like hyper scrolling, you can just press on the wheel and you’re back to regular scrolling. The nice thing about this mouse is that it has a rechargeable battery. Also, if your mouse runs out of battery, Logitech supplies a mini USB cable for recharging. This mouse costs $99 and it’s both Mac and PC compatible.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) ships with 10.0.23.1. This version of Flash Player is very unsecured in many ways.

Along with that, the latest version of Flash Player is 10.0.45.2. As you can easily notice, the version that is shipped with Mac OS X Snow Leopard is out-of-date big time.

Because of this, security issues, stability issues, along with many other things can cause Flash Player to lock up in many forms.

I would suggest that you would check that you would have the latest version of Flash Player by checking it here:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/155/tn_15507.html

And also to update Flash Player on your Mac:

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

As you can see, this is a huge flaw in Mac OS X. But at least that it comes with a version of Flash Player, unlike a lot of the operating systems out there. If you’re used to this little guy, it might be time to update your version of Flash Player.

Hopefully this might help some of you Mac OS X users out there. If this helps resolve your problems, please feel free to post your experience in the comments below!

Image borrowed from Apple's campaign "AppStore turns 1"

DISCLAIMER: Before I begin, I’d like to point out that I haven’t had a bestselling app (on iTunes) yet and like many of the developers out there, I’m still working on my first hit (that’s the spirit!). I only have two iPhone/iPod games to date (please check ‘em out at Kuyi Mobile!) and I’m hoping to release my third before my first fiscal year on this new venture ends.

Given the number of apps on iTunes AppStore right now, the greatest hurdle for any developer is getting to the top 100 and even harder is sustaining a sweet spot for an app. Developers have probably tried everything to get their apps noticed–from “peggling” to giving it away for FREE for a day but only a handful have become successful. To be honest, its awfully hard to find the trend on the AppStore nowadays. As someone who have been closely observing the AppStore for the past year, I now believe that almost any kind of app can be a bestseller regardless if Apple features you or not (although it helps if they do). If you look at the top 100 bestselling apps, you’ll find a combination of short 3-5 minute apps and high profile titles which range from $0.99 to $9.99. What I’ve noticed however, is that apps can “possibly” be categorized into 2 major types: (1) those that amuse and entertain for a short period of time, hilarious and something that one can show off to friends and can easily be spread by word of mouth (whew! what a run-on sentence!); AND (2) apps that will stay on the user’s device for a long time like productivity enhancements, utilities, and games with high replayability. The first type can go up and down the charts rapidly and has less chance of sustaining a spot within the bestselling list while the latter slowly goes up the charts and eventually stabilizes at a given spot within the top 100. Question now is, how do you achieve this? I’ve narrowed down a couple of common denominators which I will definitely follow on my upcoming release and I hope will also aid you on your next app project.

1. Unique twist or idea. This one should always be at the top of your priority list. Instead of copying an app and creating another version, expand on it and find ways to make a better variant. Incorporate your own ideas and plan well.

2. Well polished app. No matter if its a parody, a quick game or a hilarious gimmick, always ensure quality. Quality on presentation, implementation and execution. This also gives you a huge chance of getting featured by Apple.

3. Lasting impression. Whether its an app or a game, include features that will stick and appeal to your end-users. Wow your customers the first time your app is run. Design your app in such a way that users will remember the “experience”.

4. Catchy app icons. Notice how you can easily identify how any of the bestselling apps work just by looking at its icon?

5. User-friendliness. Users hate complicated apps. Just like websites, the first few minutes (or even seconds) of running your app is critical and will determine if its worth the purchase or not.

6. Staying power. Staying power on the user’s device and staying power on the charts. Be prepared with a plan prior to release. Updating the app regularly seemed to work for most developers while others choose to work on their apps for months and focus on a feature-packed and solid release.

7. Talk to your end-users. Be appreciative of feedbacks whether positive or negative. Be on the look-out for great suggestions and continuously improve your product. Build a community around your app or your business.

8. Check out these apps and use them as reference. Doodle Jump, Zombieville, Fieldrunners, iBeer (yes!), Koi Pond, Solitaire, Skee-ball, The Moron Test, Paper Toss, Tweetie 2, Bejeweled 2 and Canabalt. I’m pretty sure there are more but these are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Download a couple of these apps and see why each one is on the top of their game.

There you go! I’d be glad to hear any suggestions or ideas you can add! And if any of the points above aid you in a way, please don’t forget to give me a copy of your bestseller.

Image above borrowed from Apple.

Let’s face it folks, releasing an app on Apple’s AppStore is like dropping a needle in a haystack. There are well over 100,000 apps available and our chances of getting noticed gets smaller by the day. I was lucky enough to have my first game (Card Drop) featured by Apple under iTunes’ New and Noteworthy section. Sales soared for a week but gradually slowed down weeks after the feature. My second game (SOW), although much more unique than the first wasn’t that lucky. It went down the new releases list with the rest of the pack and didn’t get the attention I was rooting for. So what now? I’m here to tell (and convince) you that there’s light at the end of the tunnel…if you’re willing to work on it (stay positive guys!). Well, my sales aren’t what you can call successful yet but at least I don’t get a day with ZERO sales anymore (I used to!). Below are some tips and tricks I learned the hard way and wanted to share it with you.

Work on your website and product pages. Your app or company website will be your first chance to make a sales pitch (and a huge impression) so be sure that its interesting, concise, userfriendly, and catchy. Don’t let your readers think, serve them what they need to know, get to the point, give them access to BUY and TRY buttons, screenshots, videos, etc.

Start with the small review sites. Dropped Toucharcade a note and you were ignored? Work your way up by starting with the small fishes. Game review sites like Toucharcade, Appgamer.net and Pocketgamer.co.uk only feature groundbreaking titles that set the bar high or push the device to its limits. If you don’t have such a game, your chances are low so its best to go to several small review sites instead.

Know your app’s crowd. Know your niche market. And go there. For example, my second game (SOW) involved planting and business simulation so I joined several forums about simulation, planting, green revolution and let them know about my app and how it “may” benefit them. iPhone and iPod users are everywhere!

Let them experience your app. Capture a video of your game and showcase the best features. Post it on YouTube and send it along with your press release. Another way to allow users to experience your app is to create a “Lite” or “Free” version for players to download and try. The “Free” version may not have the same features as the full version but it can be enough to entice the player to purchase a copy.

Join communities on the web. Toucharcade’s forums is one of the busiest so why not mention your new app there? It wouldn’t hurt to post a small blurb about your app, a few screenshots and allow other people to post comments and feedback about it. Forums are a great way to start building a community around your app or company or any product in general.

Create a small promotion. Does your app earn you a little more than $10 per week? If so, start a small gimmick–say, give a $10 iTunes Gift Card every week to your fans and subscribers. That’s what I did for Kuyi Mobile and from a twitter following of 50+, my followers went up to around 600+ after a few weeks and still growing. It allowed me to spread the word about my games, the company and it also gave me a chance to give back to the iPhone gaming community and talk to people who have enjoyed and played my games.

Harness the power of social networking. Embrace Twitter. Embrace Facebook. These may sound odd but don’t underestimate the power of inbound marketing. Handle your support via Twitter and let others listen to what you have to say! Start discussions on Facebook and get enough fans who can help you spread the word about your apps!

Get professional help. If you can generate enough funds to afford someone who can market your game and create your press release or allow you to post ads on popular websites, don’t be afraid to go that route. After all, you gotta spend money in order to make money, right? But, always remember to back it up by having enough reviews or testimonials about your app.

There you go. The tips above are based on my personal experiences and of course, assumes that you have a quality app that’s ready for the big league. The AppStore is not a goldmine(as I learned the hard way) but it could work for you given the right cards. Don’t waste your cards, use them wisely and you’ll be on your way to achieving your goals. Good luck!

Apple will unveil their latest creationg on January 27--watch out for it!

As a Mac/iPhone developer for almost a year now, I’ve not only become accustomed to the technical aspects involved, but the “business side” of the industry as well. The iPhone market has grown from a mere hundred thousand users to over 20 million (or probably more if you include iPod Touch users) and over 100,000 apps are being sold in iTunes converting to about 2 billion downloads to date. However, being in the business of “selling” (and not just “creating”) games, small developers like me do my own marketing and muscle my way to get the word out about my new products–which is not a walk in the park. Apple has provided several tools to aid small developers in this aspect but like any other platform, it also has its own fair share of issues and shortcomings. Now that Apple is getting ready to announce yet another breakthrough this coming January 27, I hope they also take time to sit down and consider some of the points below.

1. Promo codes should work anywhere in the world. As a newbie in the industry, promo codes are my aces in order for me to get the word out about my new apps. I hand out these codes to reviewers and let them write articles about my products. However, these promo codes can only be used on the US AppStore. How about the iPhone and iPod Touch users in other regions like Asia?

2. Promo codes for in-app items. Since Apple introduced the ability for apps to sell items w/in their interface, more and more apps are getting released for FREE but rely mostly on in-app item selling. In-app items are a great way to monetize apps but it will be hard to get an app reviewed because there are NO promo codes for in-app items. Reviewers are either forced to purchase in-app items themselves in order to finish their articles OR developers are forced to provide reviewers the funds to purchase in-app items for their own games.

3. Gift apps. Notice how you can purchase a track or movie from iTunes and give it as a gift to someone else? I hope Apple allows apps to be purchased and given away as gifts too. This’ll definitely increase app sales and provide a viral means for developers to spread the word about their products. After all, players who loved my app will most probably be willing to give a another copy to a family member or a close friend.

4. Faster approval process. I have to give it to Apple–last December, I submitted my 2nd game (SOW) and it was approved in 5 days! I’m not sure if its just the Holiday season but I hope Apple continues to improve and streamline their approval process. A lot of developers have been complaining about this matter and Apple seems to be inconsistent with their approval dates.

5. Reduce monthly sales quota. For small developers like me who sell roughly about several hundred dollars worth of games per month, it would be great if Apple will lower their monthly sales quota for sending royalties. I must admit that their current quota is a little higher and will be hard to reach given the tough competition in the AppStore right now. C’mon Apple, be more lenient!

6. Open competition. While I haven’t experienced this yet, I’ve heard a couple of horror stories from developers about their apps being pulled out of the AppStore without even a single word why. Here’s another story I found over at Gear Diary which will explain this issue better. Open competition is always healthy and more beneficial to end-users.

When you first setup your e-mail client, you have to choose what type of incoming server (the server that receives your mail) will be. You can choose between POP3 and IMAP. Now granted, some providers do not provide IMAP support, so you might be forced to use POP3.

With these two different types of technologies, comes a variety of different options. Below, I am going to run down the basic things you can do with both of them.

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol)

Advantages:

• I don’t know if it’s just me, but it does seem to be faster than its competitor, POP3.
• You’re able to have your e-mails and folders exactly the same thing no matter what you are getting your e-mail on.
• Besides making you delete every e-mail on every device/computer like POP3 does, your trash bin will be universal. Meaning if you delete anything once, the changes will be applied anywhere.
• The ability to have folders synced up! Personally for me, this is an ideal thing for me. I use a variety of folders to organize all of the e-mails I receive. Have this the exactly the same thing on my Outlook, webmail, and iPod touch really does make using my e-mail a lot easier.
• Takes less bandwidth because it really doesn’t download everything until you open the e-mail.

Disadvantages:

• It’s not specific to that one machine; it’s specific to every machine. Meaning all changes will be taken affect on every device/computer that’s using your webmail via IMAP. This is a good thing in most cases, but it can be a bad thing if you want to have one thing changed on computer and not on the other.
• It will not download your e-mails when you first get them. How IMAP works is when you go press that “send/receive button”, what your e-mail client is really doing is seeing if there’s any new messages, and if so, it’ll only download the data from where the e-mail came from and who is was sent to. It will not download all of the content at once like POP3 does. So say if you want to check your e-mail when your on a cell phone, it will not download all of the data, saving you money on your bandwidth charges if you do not have an unlimited data plan.
• It’s not supported by everyone just yet.
• Sadly, you cannot sync up your contacts with IMAP…

POP3 (Post Office Protocol version 3)

Advantages:

• It’ll be specific to that one computer; locally on that computer. Whatever changes you may make, it’ll only be done on the local/user side and not the server-side.
• Once you download all of your e-mails, it’ll not connect to the server again to download more content unlike IMAP. This is good for the user if they don’t have a constant internet connection like on a phone, and they need to download all of their e-mail at one time and one time only.
• It’s supported by every mail client and e-mail company.

Disadvantages:

• It will be a slower download time because it’ll download everything at once.
• You will not be able to have your folders synced up like in IMAP globally.
• It will use more bandwidth at one time – you should be concerned if you’re using POP3 on a cell phone).

Some of the advantages and disadvantages can be taken as vice-versa. An advantage can be taken as a disadvantages; a disadvantage can be taken as an advantage. But it really boils down to what you use your email for. Next, I’ll have a table for you to see which one you would like to use.

In the end of it, I would recommend that everyone should use IMAP. Most e-mail clients support it, but there are some (mainly the old ones) that do not. If you need to have your data archeived on the computer, use POP3. But in a sense of security, technically speaking, IMAP would be safer because it doesn’t download it all at once. If your using your e-mail with a data plan on your phone, I would look into to see if you can switch over to IMAP. It will cost you less if you have to pay for your bandwidth, and you’ll even notice a speed increase because it’s not downloading everything.

Just as if we can just get IMAP to sync up my contacts, it would be perfect! I hope this runs down for you the differences between IMAP and POP3. If you have any suggestions to add into this blog post or even a comment, please leave it down below.

My Logitech Wave Keyboard

Windows 7 came out not too long ago, and with every brand new product, comes brand new features. Windows 7 comes with a variety of keyboard shortcuts to make your life a lot easier. The thing is, if you know a lot of these main keyboard shortcuts, your life will be a lot easier and it’ll be significantly easier to manage your windows; hence why they named Windows the way they did.

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Common Shortcuts:

• Win + Left 
  • Moves a window the left hand side of the screen and takes up half of the screen width
• Win + Right
  • Moves a window the right hand side of the screen and takes up half of the screen width
• Win + Up
  • Maximizes a window
• Win + Down
  • Minimizes or restores a window
• Win + Space
  • Allows to look at your desktop without switching over to it
• Win + G
  • Brings all your gadgets to the front for easy view
• Win + P
  • Allows you to view and change the options for your external monitor, that is, if you have one connected
• Win + X
  • Opens up the Windows Mobility Center where you can customized your mobile needs
• Win + (+ or -)
  • Ability to zoom in (+) and out (-) using just keyboard shortcuts

Explorer Shortcuts:

• Alt + P
  • Allows you to hide/show the preview panel in the explorer window

Taskbar Shortcuts:

• Win + (number corresponding the location on the taskbar)
  • Every program and pinned item in your taskbar has a number assigned to it from left to right in chronological order, with this key combination, you’re able to switch between windows easily with the keyboard
• Shift + Left Click on an Program
  • Opens a new instance of the program you’ve clicked on
• Shift + Right Click on an Program
  • Shows the typical window menu
• Ctrl + A click on a grouped program
  • Allows you to switch between the grouped programs

In the past posts, we have talked about what type of tools can help you out when you create a website. But there’s something else you’re going to have to think about, and this is called website maintenance. This can be a lot of work, but there’s several things you can do to help out. More info after the break!

Why you need to maintain your website:

No matter what type of website you are running, you are going to have to clean it up some day. Your website can be messy internally. This means your database or even the scripts you use can be inefficient when it comes to accessing them. The folder structure of your website can be the messiest thing in the world. Let’s say your working on a test project for your website, and there’s several files you need to put on your server. You should create a folder like “Testing” or something like that where you are able to put all your projects in. You don’t want to smack all of your files in the root directory (public_html or www; this is the main folder where your website sits on); it would get messy quickly. Your website will run slower if your scripts and even your database are messy and not cleaned up correctly.

How do you do all of this:

There’s a lot of things you could do. But we’re going to start off with the basics.

1) Clean up your source code (PHP, HTML, and CSS for example)

This might sound funny, but your scripts can slow down your website. The biggest thing is how fast the script can execute. If your script is running slowly, you might want to change your coding.

Another thing you can do is delete your blank chars (spaces before the code executed) and also your blank paragraphs. This might sound surprising, but it actually saves you some used space; in return, gives you faster loading times.

And you can try to lay up on your comments you have in your code. PHP does have to skip those comments. In other languages like C++ for example, when you compile your program, your comments are already stripped out from the program. In PHP and all types of scripts, this is not the case. So try to lay down on your internal comments. And yes, this does apply to CSS and HTML too!

Notepad++ can help you out…

2) Clean up your folder structure:

If you have a lot of folders, you might want to clean some of those up. Not for the case of slowing anything down, but mainly because it makes accessing your server via FTP or any other file transfer protocol easier.

3) Make sure your database (like MySQL) is clean:

What I mean by as clean might confuse people. But your database can get huge if you have a site that has a lot of content. Your database is like a hard drive, it can get fragmented, which slows it down in return. But there’s an easy way to fix this. All you need to do is log into PHPMyAdmin (a software that manages your database), and click on a database/table that you think needs fixed up.  First, click on a database you want to fix up. Then with the check boxes or the “Check All” at the bottom, select the tables you want to fix up. Then at the bottom of the page, you should see a drop-down box where it says “With selected:”. Click “Optimize table” and then you should be able to go. If your database is in bad shape, you can also click “Repair table”, which will try to fix corruption issues.

You can also create scripts to handle this. Remember, Google is your friend. You can search for “optimize MySQL database PHP”, and I bet you’ll find something!

4) Backup your site:

This is the most important part! If anything crashes or corrupts, you could be lost a couple of files. You should always backup your database no matter what! You don’t always have to backup your files (unless if your content is stored in those PHP/HTML/CSS files), but it would be a good thing to think about. Personally, I backup my database every week, and I backup all my files every month. This is all managed by scripts. And about every 5 months or so, I store the backup on a terabyte hard drive I have. You always want to be safe.

A search with “backup files database PHP” on Google can help!

I hope some of these tips for cleaning and maintaining your website will help you out!

– Content Management Systems (CMS) –
A CMS is a type of software that can run on your server that can help you create your whole website. A great example of this is a piece of software called WordPress (read below to find out more). You can find that most blogs run on some type of software like WordPress. It basically helps you manage your site and keep your content organized. Although not all the time… All of the CMS’s we have here support plugins, modifications, and of course templates! Now, all of these CMS’s listed do not mean you can get away from HTML, PHP, CSS, and much more.

Here’s a list of some CMS’s:

• WordPress

WordPress is one of the popular CMS’s out there. It’s used for a lot of different cases, but one of the main features people love WordPress for is it’s blogging feature. With WordPress, you’re able to set up a blog easily! It can do other things, but some other CMS’s are easier to use and can do more than WordPress. Themes are extremely easy to find, and will not be any problem! With WordPress, you can have a blog up and running very quickly!

• Drupal

Drupal is a great CMS. It’s one of the CMS’s that’s easy to use and easy to modify. But it’s not one of the CMS’s we would recommend because it’s a bit more complicated to use. Drupal for sure is one of the fastest CMS’s out there when you have caching and GZIP on, which makes your website take up less bandwidth and also render a lot faster. Themes can be limited, but you could always create one yourself.

• Joomla

Joomla is one of the CMS’s that we can not say how much we love it. It’s one of the easiest to use CMS’s out there! You can install plugins, modules, templates to the system extremely easily from it’s backend. It’s very stable and is also one of the best for theming! It has so many themes that your choices will blow you away! It’s something we would recommend if you are a starter, professinal, or anything else. It supports all of the masses out there! You can for sure get a website done fast with Joomla.

• Mambo

Mambo is actually very familiar to Joomla, because Joomla is based off Mambo. Like Joomla, it’s very fast, sleek, and easy to use. A lot of people use Mambo, even businesses.

• PHP-Nuke

PHP-Nuke is for a different type of CMS. In PHP-Nuke, you can change the site to anything you’ll like and also add new features to it too!

• TYPO3

TYPO3 is for sure a CMS that is great for high use, for example, a business website that recieves many veiwers a day. It can be used for both a blog and  CMS. It’s light-weight too!

- Newsletters -
When having a business, small business, or even a personal website, sometimes you would like to send out a news letter. Yes, there’s software that can run on top of your CMS, but it would be great to have external software, and that’s what we are going to talk about today. You really need to just see what you like best. There are other mailing systems, but these are the best in our opinion.

• PHPList

PHPList is for sure one lovely newsletter system. It’s easy to use, and man, it for sure has a lot of features. You can easily link it to a form on your CMS, and let it handle all the work for you!

• Mailman

Mailman is for sure easy to use. It’s better for managing discussions than PHPList, but PHPList does have losts of features in it. Mailman is different, so you should just try it to see if you like it.

There’s some peices of software that can help you out! If you would like anything added to it, please let us know with our contact form!

Then over the years, I started to like web design even more. So I said to myself, “I want to learn more about web design”. What did I do? I created one of my first websites, TJasko.com, which is not used that much for anything today.

With TJasko.com, I was able to learn a lot of things; not developing skills, more along the lines of being a webmaster. I was able to learn how to keep a website running smoothly. Then after a while, I became the webmaster of several websites. After with all the experience I had, after learning CSS, HTML, PHP, XHTML, SQL, and many more, I’m was able to create one of my first major website; the website you are on right now, TechCores.com.

While I was learning all of this, no one was helping me. Even if I wanted help, I didn’t get much. I learned a lot of my skills just by messing around (which is always recommended to learn something new) and using my resources like the internet.

What I did have was a mast directory to help me find the things I need, source code. Yes, that’s right, for about 1 year, all I did was examin people’s source code to see how the website works. I learned so much by doing this, I was able to start writing my own code.

But the thing is, there’s really no easy way to share all of this information with the world. You do have directories which have a lot of information about creating a website, but nothing really that’s easy to follow along.

So that’s what Tech Cores will be helping you with. For however long it takes us, we will break web design and all the webmastering skill one by one in a simple guide of different blog posts or parts. This will help us focus on one topic every day and help you learn something too. Every single day (unless if it’s a major holiday or something important) there will be a new part about website design or webmastering. And when we’re all done, we’ll compile all this information, and put it in one big “how-to” guide!

So fasten your seat bealts, and gear up for the knowledge of becoming a great website designer and webmaster! More to come soon!

How do you access the Internet…modem, ethernet, wireless card?  For the past 5 months, I’ve been using Apple’s AirPort Extreme to broadcast a wireless signal throughout my home and my dorm room.  I purchased the 802.11N Wireless PCI Xtreme N Desktop Adapter for my desktop to connect the the AirPort Extreme.

AirPort Extreme

The AirPort Extreme lets you connect to the Internet wirelessly, connect to a USB enabled harddrive, and/or a USB printer.  It sets up the perfect home network.  The Extreme supports all wireless networks up to the draft 802.11N.  There are 4 ethernet ports for those computers that are not wireless.

Why did I choose to setup a wireless network for my desktop?  One good reason…I hate wires.  I also have friends with laptops who like to use my connection.  I have a Dell Studio 15 laptop and it supports the wireless N network too.  For those who don’t know about wireless N technology, it’s a much faster version of the standard wireless G network.

AirPort Express

I also have the AirPort Express.  It is a much smaller, more portable, and more convenient version of the AirPort Extreme.   It plugs right in to any outlet.  You can plug in your Internet’s ethernet cord to broadcast a wireless signal.  You can also plug in a USB printer and speakers.  The AirPort Express can be used to extend your wireless network or to create a whole new network.  It can be easily unplugged and taken anywhere.  I specifically use it so I can wirelessly broadcast music to speakers.  Very cool technology.

The Airport Extreme retails for $179 and the AirPort Express retails for $99.  Is it worth it?  I would say yes, as long as your computer(s) support(s) a wireless N network and/or you desire to connect to a printer wirelessly.  Check it out.  It may be the right setup for you.  It’s fairly easy to setup and both Apple and PC users can take advantage of the Extreme and the Express.