Along with this, I’ve seen a shift in applications being rejected on technical grounds to applications being rejected on the basis of real or perceived Terms of Use violations or other quasi legal grounds.

This includes rejections for:

• “Scraping” Content from 3rd party sites
• Non official use of a 3rd party API
• Concerns over handling of user data

Now, while there is no checkbox for ‘I cross my heart and hope I’m not violating any treaties of the land’ during the app submission process there is a ‘Review Notes’ section where you can list any steps you’ve taken to remaining on the right side of the law.

For my apps, I’ve started including all of the following information (when relevant):

1. APIs used, along with links to API terms of service, and just a statement such as: “This application conforms to the rules and regulations for API usage at NAME OF SERVICE.”
2. Links to naming and or branding guidelines for API usage. For instance, Netflix requires that applications using their API have names in the form of “X for Netflix” not “Netflix X”.
3. Name and email contact if there are questions / concerns about usage. In particular, I’ve been involved in some projects where the application we were producing was the ‘Official’ application, but it was being published under our company name in association with another provider. So, I included the contact information for the marketing manager at the ‘official’ company.
4. If images, icon sets, etc. are included in the application that may have been used in other applications, I’ll put a quick note regarding where and how they were licensed.
5. If the application interacts with an external site that the reviewer may not be familiar with I would include a summary of that site, including things that you might consider obvious.

   An example: I’ve heard of a couple different applications for interacting with Hacker News being rejected for various versions of: “This seems like it might be shady.”

   If I was submitting such an application, I would definitely put in the review notes a quick paragraph along the lines of: “Despite the name ‘Hacker News’ is not actually about breaking into computers of violating encryption policies, but is a social news site for people interested in startups, programming and interesting technical feats.”

6. Lastly, the app store reviewers are poring over hundreds if not thousands of applications a week. It costs you nothing to be polite and human towards them.

   As a reviewer which review notes opening would put you in a more positive frame of mind about an application:

   Thanks for reviewing my application, to get started here’s a username and password for you to login and use:

   username: appletester

   password: 1happypuppy

   or

   username: apple
   
   password: password
   

   C’mon, who doesn’t like a happy puppy.

Lastly, here is the (lightly redacted) text of the Review Notes section for Flickscan – Barcode Scanning for Netflix, which was approved first try.

Sean Cribbs led a very wide ranging talk on how to manage and contribue to an open source project at last weeks Raleigh Ruby Camp.

Some things really stuck out to me:

1. The move to Github quieted the number of people who thought they were heavy handed as they could just fork whenever they wanted.

2. Plugins as a way to involve people in the project without changing the core.

3. Day job is supporting hacking

4. Building a service business around an open source application seems like a natural type of business.

Links:

• Radiant CMS
• WordPress.org
• Github
• CodeHaus
• Upstart
• Radiant on Crack
• Redcloth
• Bluecloth
• Rdiscount

[audio:http://buzzwordcompliant.s3.amazonaws.com/sean-cribbs.mp3]

Download

The quick summary is that due to the cheap lease price, mall architecture (it’s a big box that was designed to be gutted and split up), and electricity pricing in the area what was a massive eyesore and huge problem is suddenly a revitalizing force bringing 1400 tech jobs into the area.

Rolling Acres Mall in Akron Ohio (the mall I went to growing up) suffered a similar fate to the San Antonio mall described in the video. It slowly became a ghost town of crappy shops selling jewelry that was nearly gold and for some reason an inordinate number of storefront churches. Outwardly at least it would be a good candidate for a similar conversion: cheap electricity from the Perry Nuclear Power Plant, close proximity to the University of Akron, and at this point Akron would probably pay somebody to occupy the building.

One of my favorite websites, Worse Than Failure, today posted an article slamming the Agile Programming methodology. Their basic premise:

Good people can build good software no matter what methodology they use. We don’t need a weight-loss pill for thin people; we need to solve the real problem behind failure in our industry. The bar for “acceptable� is far too low. We need to focus on improving the skills of the less-than-good in our industry.

While totally 100% correct, it also misses the point. This is easy as there are so many directives, software add-ons, books and other wacky things being shoved wholesale under the “Agile” tent that the central message has been lost. At it’s heart, Agile was a way for programmers of any skill-level to improve their code in the only way that matters: it’s usefulness to it’s users.

If you have to write a program (even one of the gigabyte plus “Excel Databases” that regularly find their way onto the WTF site), it’s better to incrementally deliver multiple versions of a program than to try and write a monolithic app that a year plus after it’s spec’d out you drop onto your end users lap.

This has as much to do with clueless end users as it does programmers. No amount of programming skill can get around such deadly obstacles as:

“You know, the new regulations went into effect and don’t have to do that anymore.”

“Who told you that? Denise? You know she drinks a bottle of Nyquil every day at lunch right?”

“We were told it was going to be a website, do you install the website onto our computers?”

Agile’s emphasis on early delivery of software of some functionality is a way to identify problems quicker than they would otherwise be discovered.

Have someone on your team who is “almost” done with that crucial library you need written? Better to find out now that it’s an unworkable Frankenstein of: generated code, inapplicable cut and pasted demo applications and chunks of a now defunct GPL licensed project that they found on SourceForge, than to wait 3 months down the line and be really screwed.

Agile’s not some be all end all of programming goodness and it won’t magically add IQ points or common sense to someone’s brain, but as a general strategy for writing code that is of actual value to someone; despite the foibles of humanity, it’s tough to beat.

Technorati Tags: programming, agile, software, WTF

While I think the ideas good, if you’re going to go through all the trouble of switching everything around, how about just biting the bullet and moving to QR Codes?

QR Codes are cool, could work with today’s mobile phones and contain more information that the databar, and you know, people are actually using them.

Here is a Haiku inside a QR code:

Here is a guy with a french accent talking about using QR codes as a URL encoding mechanism:

Here’s a video of several Japanese (I think) women extolling the virtues of the QR code (I think). If nothing else there are some neat pictures of burger wrappers, badges, and websites with QR codes, and as an added bonus the second woman talking has a voice deeper than a chain smoking lumberjack after a yodeling contest.

MacApper is running a contest for the best “switcher” story: someone ditching Windows for the Mac. Today’s entry was interesting, Joe Goh founder of FunkeeMonk a windows programmer turned Mac software developer.

Personally, I was less interested in his “switching story”, than in the story of how he got started with his business. As near as I can tell, Joe chose the absolutely hardest route possible to create a salable software application. Don’t take my word for it, read his “Bittersweet story in 15 slides” (warning: pdf link). It chronicles his creation of “FunkeeStory”, the wildly un-googleable name for his Treo->Mac SMS message application.

While, I’ve nothing but respect for Joe and his work there are a couple things I might have done differently if I were in Joe’s spot:

1. Created a “starter” application that was a release milestone with fewer features than the 1.0 of FunkeeStory. Anything to: get users, get cashflow, get an “real” release under your belt. Some sort of Treo/OSX file transfer application seems like a possible step.

2 Charge more. It’s obviously not the whole story in the slides but pricing decisions were made based on feedback from users saying “Your app is too expensive!”, even after discounting from $25 to $20. This is extremely dangerous as users would say the same thing even if it was $10. My suggestion would be to go the other route, pick a date a couple weeks from now and say that on that day you’re doing to double the price. Explain on the site that you need mexican food and microbrews to function and output more great software and take the resulting sales data as another price point on your supply demand curve.

It might also be helpful to read Camels and Rubber Duckies by Joel.

Technorati Tags: startups, osx, mac, software, pricing, strategy

That seems to be the crucial part of the ruling here, because it essentially means it’s acceptable for employers (or at least the federal government, as an employer) to check out workers’ backgrounds online. The judges seem to be saying (quite reasonably) that the internet shouldn’t get singled out for special treatment, and that it should be considered as any other research source. Should any communication on the internet constitute prejudicial ex-parte communication, then it should be dealt with as such. The bottom line: just because your boss found out about your past online, it certainly doesn’t mean they can’t fire you.

My new project (still unannounced, but progressing) is an attempt to help people manage their own online “brand”. I’m still kicking around ideas, maybe there is some way to algorithmically generate an “Online Reputation Score”, though it would be nice to have a snappier nickname: Jerk Index? Stalker Score?

[update] I’m thinking maybe Internet Karma – IK [/update]

If I go ahead with commercializing it as a service, it’s likely I’d need to make the API dependent features part of the “premium” package to directly attribute their costs to that of the API’s.

As part of Om Malik’s writeup of Akimbo’s decision to drop their actual hardware offering and become a software and service player in the online video space he asks if standalone video on demand boxes have a chance?

However, even this shift by Akimbo goes against the larger happenings on the Internet: videocasts, vlogs, etc. It’s an improvement to go from three boxes mediating video to my TV to only one, but a near lateral shift to needing some PC-Like box that needs to run Akimbo, iTunes, NetFlix on Demand and Amazon’s UnBox video service to reach all the video out there.

The real question is: Will the hardware and software ecosystem for Video on Demand end up looking more like AOL or more like the open internet 5, 10, 15 years from now?

[UPDATE 5/7/2007] – David Pogue seems not to like the Akimbo service due to it’s lack of content options.

Anyway, whatever shape it turns up in, I do think it would be an interesting thing to have a site that acted as some sort of truth sifting device. People “bid” or “vote” or indicate in some calculable way what stories they think are true and then get rewarded or punished based upon their historical accuracy. Generally these are known as Prediction Markets and I find the whole notion of a mobile / quickly distributed one very interesting.