joreteg.comthe tumblog of Henrik Joreteg RSS

Jan
26th
2010
Tue
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Dear Google, please add the web-app meta tag to mobile apps

Google just built a sweet mobile version of Google voice for iPhone.

Google Voice Mobile WebApp

I have but one complaint about all the awesome HTML5 mobile webapps that Google has been releasing lately.

They open in Safari on my iPhone

That means that each time I want to access it even if I save a shortcut to my homescreen on the iPhone it opens in a new window in Safari. This gets annoying in a hurry and actually stops me from using the other mobile web apps like Gmail from my phone (I use the built in mail program instead).

The silly thing is this is sooooo easy to fix!

All they would have to do is add the following meta tag to their mobile apps:

<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes" />

Problem solved, now if I saved it to my homescreen it would open as if it were a stand-alone application. Why Google, why?

There must be a reason, but it makes no sense to me.


Jan
24th
2010
Sun
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Awesome stop-motion video

I was really blown away by the creativity of this video. Very cool.


Jan
11th
2010
Mon
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New Years Resolutions

Definitely a bit late, but nonetheless, here’s a few resolutions for 2010

  • Get 100 churches signed up for my new BulletinApp.com service.
  • Make 50% of my household income from passive (or at least semi-passive) sources.
  • Do 100 pushups in a row.
  • Learn how to hold a hand-stand for more than 1 minute.
  • Take my home office as close to paperless as possible. (Evernote rocks!)
  • Buy a house.

It’s a start… I may add to this list, but I’m not gonna take anything off!


Dec
17th
2009
Thu
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A Webapp for Building iPhone Apps

Normally having a custom iPhone or Android app is something that is out of reach for smaller organizations. Also, as you may have heard the Apple’s app approval process is quite a headache. Several of my friends and co-workers have written iPhone apps and the truth is, that it’s a very real possibility that your app won’t be accepted and all your work will have been wasted.

When I saw David Kaneda’s amazing jQTouch project, it made me realize that you could actually build “navtive-feeling” applications using nothing but HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. So I started playing with it.

But the beauty of the web, is that it’s dynamic. That’s when I had a bit of an epiphany: I realized that it’s possible to build tools that will let people build their own custom iPhone app and completely circumvent the App Store. Check out this little demo that I built. It’s still needs a bunch of styling and other work but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

I’d recommend watching the HD version just to see things more clearly.

A Webapp for Building an iPhone Apps from Henrik Joreteg on Vimeo.

Let me know what you think.


Dec
1st
2009
Tue
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We have results when we have them…we don’t set a date and then say we have to release this feature by a certain date and then suddenly the team has to pull several all-nighters and the quality of the feature is compromised. We don’t like to work that way. It’s too important to get things right.
— Guido van Rossum, inventor of Python

Nov
23rd
2009
Mon
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Must have changes for when forced to work in XP

This post is different than most of my posts in that there’s nothing cool or sexy about it. It’s about comfort while dealing with having to work with an old windows system.

I have been living in Mac land for so long, that I didn’t even realize that some of these changes were possible. I just chalked it up to Microsoft’s way of punishing the people that use their systems.

God bless lifehacker for their write-up of this, you can fix some of the annoyances of windows to reduce eye strain and avoid staring at ugly pixelated text.

First: Turn on Clear Type: Go to Display -> Appearance -> Effects and make sure you check the “Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts” and set it to “ClearType”

screenshot of clear-type setting in XP

Second: Crank up the refresh rate on your monitor: Go to Display -> Settings -> Advanced, then look for a setting for the screen refresh rate. Mine looked as follows, it was set on 60hz i put it on 75, which was the highest it would go. These two changes will reduce eye strain… highly recommended if you spend a lot of time staring at an XP system.