So I’m thinking that I’m going to write a similar widget, only this time, it’ll be powered by Metacritic. I’m incredibly busy right now with two iPhone applications so maybe Jess will be taking the reigns on this one.

He’s a recent graduate of Computer Science who decided to send a copy of his resumé to Google. It’s an insightful read for anyone wondering what it’s like to have Google pay attention to you.

The first part covers the phone interview and the events leading up to the (payed) flight to Sydney. The second part covers the studying process and what it was like to front up at Google.

I hope it’s self-evident that apps with too much stuff are, in general, bad. And that there are some features whose time has come and gone, and there are features that don’t get used much.

When working on a new version of the app, before I think about the features I want to add, I take a look at what I can get rid of first. It’s a quality-of-app thing. I think of it as making space for the new stuff — but first I have to take the wrecking ball to some old stuff. (If I don’t, you get feature sprawl. Yuck.)

Jorge’s the one on the right.

#define BBTrace NSLog(@"%s", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__);

#define BBTraceInfo(s,...) \
{ \
    NSString* info = BBInfoString(s, ##__VA_ARGS__); \
    NSLog(@"%s (%@)", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, info); \
    [info release]; \
}

The implementation of BBInfoString is as follows:

NSString* BBInfoString(NSString* format, ...)
{
    va_list args;

    va_start(args, format);

    NSString* info =
        [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:format arguments:args];

    va_end(args);

    return info;
}

The basic usage is:

-(void)func
{
    BBTrace;

    if (isEnabled)
    {
        BBTraceInfo(@"enabled");
    }
}

The output is:

May 18 16:47:29 Machine App[72187]: -[SomeClass func]
May 18 16:47:29 Machine App[72187]: -[SomeClass func] (enabled)

These functions are available for download. Feel free to use them in your own applications.

All of the footage is taken from the two hour pilot episode. The music is from Melrose Place. The video was made entirely in iMovie ‘08. The experience seesawed from effortless to frustrating. Here are some random thoughts:

• Scrubbing is incredible; certainly faster and smoother than QuickTime.
• There is an annoying bug that causes all of the thumbnails to intermittently disappear from the Project browser. I was able to get them back again by randomly adjusting the frames per thumbnail slider.
• I can’t for the life of me understand why iMovie doesn’t allow for manual placement of text.

All in all though, this whole project took about two and half hours to complete, so that’s saying something.

Uncle Henry is also a term used in business to describe the fallout when cross-functional synergies disrupt a core value proposition through N number of market anomalies precipitated by a consumer paradigm shift.

It’s not a joke. It does, however, appeal to my sense of humor. If you were playing Buzzword Bingo, that sentence would most certainly turn you into a winner.

Given the quality and quantity of material on offer, including fully layered original Photoshop PSD files for each major stage, the € 95 price tag seems like the bargain of the century.

Yeah, I know, that was more than a month ago and you’ve probably already seen it on my Flickr.