Roelof Roos

Not all the good things in life are free (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:55:54 -0700

Not all the good things in life are free (Taken with instagram)

In October 2004 Mount St. Helens became active again. I...

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 14:19:39 -0700

In October 2004 Mount St. Helens became active again. I went there to take a look and then this sign stopped me.

The most impressive was looking at the mountain thinking about the before and after photos of the 1980 eruption. That a mountain that big can blow up is mind boggling.

iOS talks at SoCal Code Camp

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 13:43:00 -0700

I will be presenting two introduction to iOS development sessions at the upcoming SoCal Code Camp this weekend (October 23rd & 24th at USC, Los Angeles). SoCal Code Camp is held a few times a year and admission is free.

My sessions are for people who are considering iOS (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) development. In my sessions, I plan to answer all their questions. Questions like: What do you need? Is creating a complete app something for me? Which frameworks are available? Can I do it all by myself? What are the best resources? How complicated is the submission process actually? Should I try to mix this with Windows Phone 7 or Android development? How do I make money? And of course I introduce you to Xcode, Apple’s development environment and Objective-C. Complete descriptions of my sessions are here:

http://www.socalcodecamp.com/sessions.aspx?tag=iOS

My sessions are Saturday morning. If you plan to come, make sure to be there early, the number of available seats is less than the number of people that signed up for the iOS sessions. (You can probably stand or sit on the floor, I suppose. If not, I will do the sessions twice, just outside if I have too.) The complete schedule is packed with more than 100 sessions, all geek stuff. :) SoCal Code Camp is mostly focused on Microsoft stuff, but other topics are encouraged by the organizers. A complete list of the sessions is available on the site. And I always find it nice to meet other developers. It will be fun!

"The best allies are those who don’t think like the others."

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 19:08:18 -0700

“The best allies are those who don’t think like the others.”

- Paulo Coelho in a ‘20 second read’ about the process of writing. Reading that, it seems to me writing is a lot like creating great software.

Early in the morning the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis...

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:59:00 -0700

Early in the morning the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) is getting ready to dock in the San Diego harbor. The ship is 1,092 feet (333 meters) long and has a crew of 6,500 people.

The San Diego Padres do quite well this year but no one is sure...

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 11:01:41 -0700

The San Diego Padres do quite well this year but no one is sure yet if they will make it to the playoffs. And that while we are in the second half of September. Padres fans know the feeling all too well. At the moment this picture was taken the spectators were feeling better.

Photo taken in Petco Park, San Diego, California.

Inside Cocoa

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 09:13:00 -0700

I took this picture inside Château de Chenonceau. The same French castle that is pictured on the cover of Cocoa Design Patterns. On the book cover the outside of this castle is shown, which is pretty impressive, especially because the bridge that spans the river Cher is part of the castle. The picture above is taken inside that bridge. The inside is still nice, but not nearly as impressive as the outside.

Something like that is true for most books on Cocoa/iOS/iPhone development. They look good on the outside, but a soon as you dive in, they are nice but nothing more. Cocoa Design Patterns is an exception to this rule, in my humble opinion this is one of the few books every iOS or Mac OS X developer should read. It is not a book for beginners, but will suit someone who has already quite some Cocoa experience.

Cocoa Design Patters

by Erik M. Buck and Donald A. Yacktman

Published by Addison-Wesley Professional

ISBN-10: 0321535022

ISBN-13: 978-0321535023

Below are some more pictures of the Château de Chenonceau.

Photos taken some years ago with my Kodak DC290.

Saguaro

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 05:31:00 -0700

Close-up of a Sagauro. Makes excellent wallpaper. Sagauros are very big; some may live for more than 150 years.

Photo taken in Saguaro National Park, Tucson, Arizona.

Photo above also taken in Saguaro National Park.

Photo below taken somewhere alongside the road in Tucson.

Speaking at Ignite: It was different

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:47:35 -0700

As I wrote about this before I was one of the speakers at Ignite San Diego earlier this week. (Photos are here.) More people signed up to speak than there were slots available so part of the selection process was a vote through ‘uservoice’ (great site). Fortunately I was selected although the subject of my talk, iPhone Development, was not as hip as most of the other proposed subjects.

It did not go as I expected. I am quite comfortable with speaking in front of an audience but with an Ignite talk you only have five minutes accompanied by a 20-slide presentation that advances automatically. That made it nerve wrecking. I got enthusiastic reactions about my first Ignite talk but next time I will do some things different. Maybe I set the bar a little too high, but this is what I learned that night:

You need to choose your subject carefully. I choose ‘Getting started with iPhone development’ because I know that subject very well. But it was too extensive to cover in five minutes. You need to choose a subject that is simple and easy to explain in a very short time. The most popular talk of the night was on waffles.
I usually do not prepare a talk that well. I learned through the years that my talks are way better when I do not practice intensively. The auto advancing of the slides makes giving the presentation very different. You really need to practice, practice and practice. (Especially when you are not a native English speaker, like me.) Some speakers read their talk from paper, and hey, maybe some geek will use a teleprompter sometime in the future. I do not like that, we are not reading the news or giving away Oscars here. Paper or the teleprompter solves the timing problem (if you do it correctly), but the audience deserves better.
In my opinion most speakers did not do as well on content as they could have done. A lot of the talks were very promising when you read the title and the description but eventually disappointed a little. It was a great and exciting night but it was not as intense as it could have been. Now two days have passed and I do not remember the message(s) of about half of the talks. (The other half is still resonating.) I had good content but because I did not present it as well as I would like I am afraid most people missed a lot of it. Some other speakers presented quite well but, it seems, at the cost of not having that much good compact content. A good speaker knows exactly what he or she will communicate, or better, will not communicate. They will only deliver their core message and have no need to talk quickly (like I and some others did) because ‘you only have five minutes’. It is sort of an elevator pitch.
Your slides need to be very attractive. I made slides with a (professional) look that I think fit my subject. That works well if you do a longer talk, in the first five minutes your audience figures out what you and your talk are about, gets enthusiastic (hopefully) and then enjoys the rest of the talk. With Ignite there is no ‘rest of the talk’. You need to use all means at your disposal to ‘ignite’ your audience instantly. Good slides are a big help. And “good slides” with an Ignite talk are very different from good slides with a regular/longer talk.

One other thing, there was also this food serving truck that looked a little like those food trucks you see at construction sites. This one was very different, they had actually very good food. A gourmet restaurant on wheels. It was called the Miho Gastrotruck and on their website you can see where they will be at a particular moment. I will find that truck again.

I have not visited Japan yet but this photo may make you think I...

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:00:00 -0700

I have not visited Japan yet but this photo may make you think I did. It is actually taken in downtown San Diego. San Diego is home of a lot of US Navy stuff, foreign navy vessels visit the city on a regular basis.

Speaking at Ignite about iPhone Development

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:29:00 -0700

This Tuesday I am scheduled to give a presentation at Ignite San Diego about iPhone Development. A presentation at Ignite is accompanied by a 20-slide deck (Keynote or PowerPoint) that advances automatically. Each slide is shown for 15 seconds, so the complete presentation takes five minutes.

Ignite was inspired by Pecha Kucha Nights, where speakers are given 20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds, giving each speaker six minutes and 40 seconds of fame. ‘Pecha Kucha’ is the Japanese term for ‘chit chat’. The first Ignite was sponsored by O’Reilly Media and took place in Seattle in 2006. Since then the event spread over the world. O’Reilly has continued to support Ignite.

Apps that don't exist, but should

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 10:25:00 -0700

David Pogue, the well-known columnist for the New York Times on everything gadget, no, everything technology, did something interesting: David asked his Twitter followers which apps were still missing in the iTunes App Store. In other words, which apps do they want for their iPhone (or iPad, or iPod touch) but are not available?

It is an interesting article which you can read here; one paragraph particularly struck me:

I’ll spare you the jokey wishful-thinking responses: “an app that puts my kids to bed at night,” “an app that gives my wife the ‘right answer,’ ” “an app that teleports me to a spot with a good cell signal.” O.K., everyone’s a comedian.

Wishful thinking? This is my app! I have made an app that comes pretty close to ‘an app that gives my wife the right answer’. It is called Mr Right. Whenever a guy does not know what to say, just use this app and you’re good to go. Really.

I tried to find the Twitter user that submitted said suggestion, but I was unsuccessful.

Those who have installed Mr Right on their iPhone like it. At least, everybody tells me they really love my app. Maybe the people I come across are just polite, but I actually think it is a nice app for 99 cents. There is a lot of crap in the App Store and I made sure my app is not crap: people think it is funny, it makes them laugh, they like the design, the app itself helps the user figure out how it works (with sort of context sensitive help), it turns off certain hardware when not needed to save the battery, and it just works. (And no, it does not crash.)

I think about 10% of the apps in the App Store are good and not a waste of your time and money. The problem is, according to my own guesstimate, that less than 5% of the about 250,000 apps get noticed. That means right now at least 25,000 are good but go unnoticed. Not a good situation.

There is also a Mrs Right.

Orange

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 07:06:00 -0700

Today the Netherlands will play Spain in the soccer world cup final. On Queens Day (April 30th) and with important soccer matches of the national Dutch team, Holland turns orange. Here is my cappuccino, made by the very nice folks of Twiggs.

More photos of ‘the making of’:

Next time I do something like this I need to make sure to bring a camera that allows me to focus properly.

Gammage Auditorium, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, in Tempe,...

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 17:22:34 -0700

Gammage Auditorium, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, in Tempe, Arizona.

Dutch members of parliament ask questions about Apple's new privacy policy

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 15:48:00 -0700

With the release of iOS 4, which brings us, among other features, iAd, Apple has updated the iTunes end-user license agreement and privacy policy. With this Apple enables itself to collect even more user information as the company already did, now also allowing to constantly collect the user’s location based on the iPhone’s GPS. Apple wants to use this information to tailor an ad to the users interests. Apple says the location data will be collected anonymously.

The above prompted two members of the Dutch parliament to ask formal questions to the Minister of Economic Affairs, Maria van der Hoeven. They want to know if the Minister is aware of what Apple is doing, if she agrees with Apple’s statement that location data can be stored anonymously and what she plans to do about it. The Minster has not answered yet but I did.

Let me first show that location data is almost never anonymous: People usually sleep at home and their phone is at their home too when they sleep. So when you take a look at a bunch of historic location data, that place a particular person spends five to eight hours each day is his of her home. (Except of course for people like Ryan Bingman, but not that many people are like Ryan Bingman.) That location can then be matched to some other data Apple or a company that Apple shares the data with has already access too. So the question should not be whether or not location data is anonymous, the question should be how Apple and others use, store and protect the data.

Apple’s main source of revenue does and will not come from running advertising platforms like iAd. That however, is the case with companies like Google and Facebook. Many people think Google is about a search engine, Gmail, an operating system for mobile devices called Android and some other neat services. But it is not, Google is a company that sells ads and has some fine products to show these ads with in order to have consumers click on them. Google (and many others) try to make the chance that you actually click on an ad as high as possible by making the ads more relevant. They do that using your search history, the content of your emails in Gmail, et cetera. Facebook uses even more private information, Facebook operates under the assumption that you like what your friends like. Apple does not know about your search history or your friends (yet) but with iOS 4 they do know your current location and your location history and Apple wants to use that to make the ads shown to you more relevant. Companies like Apple, Google and Facebook all uses automated processes that access your data and choose an ad based on that data.

In my opinion this is all fine, I may like it even better when I am shown ads based on my interest, as long my privacy is protected. Some people may think that you avoid any problems by opting out. Apple offers an option to opt-out trough http://oo.apple.com/. But this only causes that you do not get ads based on your interests, it does not cause the collection of data to stop.

Protecting privacy may be tricky. Of course all those companies need to follow the law and there are privacy laws too. The way people think about their privacy however, changes over time, privacy is a variable concept. The ways the information is used change over time too. That can make it hard for the privacy law makers to keep up with. That does not mean however governments should stop trying, on the contrary.

Apple has a lot to loose. Apple is a trusted brand of high quality well designed devices. Facebook has privacy troubles all the time, Google has had it share, Apple does not need and does not want that. Because Apple’s main business is not selling ads they can afford to be careful and avoid rubbing their customers the wrong way. Making someone feel like their privacy is invaded is not what you would call a good ‘user experience’.

There is another user experience issue and that is that I do not always like the ads that are tailored to me. I sometimes even hate them. Sometimes I post something on Facebook about food, I like good food you know, so I share my experiences with my friends. Facebook responds by showing ads about loosing weight. They also know my age and sometimes they throw in an ad about ‘fixing you bad teeth’ too. If Apple would do that, I would hate them for their ‘user experience’ and that is exactly what Steve Jobs does not want. I trust Apple with my credit card information (they store it in my iTunes account) so it would be strange if I would not trust them with my privacy. No reason to feel confident about it however.

So, in conclusion, what should the Dutch Minister do? First, she should acknowledge that historical location data is not anonymous in most cases. Because this is a matter that does not concern the Dutch only I see a role here for the EU commissioner for Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, another Dutch female politician. So for now, what I am concerned the Dutch Minister does not have to do anything but to keep her eyes and ears open.

I wrote more on this subject for One More Thing, in Dutch:

http://www.onemorething.nl/2010/06/iad-een-mijnenveld-voor-apple/

http://www.onemorething.nl/2010/07/omt-beantwoordt-kamervragen/

iPhone 4: First Impressions

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 22:11:00 -0700

For the Dutch website One More Thing I did a quick review of the new iPhone 4. The new phone went on sale today in the US, but not in every country. My Dutch and Belgian readers at One More Thing can not just go to an Apple Store and check out the phone. So I went and below are my first impressions:

Man, those lines at the Apple Store are long. Apple must be doing very well, these are the longest lines I have ever seen there at an Apple Store. (And I have seen a few.) And at earlier occasions you where not able to reserve or buy online. This will be record sales.
The new iPhone 4 is fast. It is significantly faster than the 3GS and way faster than the 3G.
The screen is awesome. Really awesome. There is no way to describe this, you need to see this yourself.
iOS 4 works really nice, I particularly like the fast app switching: now I can do a copy-in-one-app and paste-in-another fast.
Apple did a great job, app developers are doing a great job, consumers are willing to pay, now only the mobile operators need to get their act together.

The complete story (in Dutch) can be found here:

http://www.onemorething.nl/2010/06/iphone-4-eerste-indrukken/

Children and Chickens at Play. Picture taken in San Juan...

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:44:00 -0700

Children and Chickens at Play.

Picture taken in San Juan Capistrano, California, just west of the Amtrak station.

What to do at a WWDC?

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:03:00 -0700

I hear they are a lot of folks at WWDC (Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference) this year that have never been at a WWDC before. I’m not there this year (due to fun ‘family circumstances’) but I have been to a WWDC about 15 times before. What to do at a WWDC? Here is my take:

Sessions: A WWDC is packed with sessions demonstrating / explaining / discussing older but mostly new stuff about iPhone OS, Mac OS X and Safari. (Mac OS X seems to be missing at this years WWDC however.) Although registered developers can download the sessions afterwards they are still very interesting to attend in person. Seeing and hearing the Apple engineers and other developers (during the Q&A) that use a particular framework can provide a nice extra perspective. It is interesting to find out other ways to use the stuff you are using yourself.
Labs: Interact with Apple engineers. For me this is the most valuable part of WWDC. While coding I once in a while walk into something that I do not solve immediately. But after some Googling, some experimenting and maybe a forum post I always get the code to do what I want it to do. But that does not always mean I understand it 100%. Did I miss something? Did I work around a bug? How did Apple actually implement it? Is the way I am using it the way the intended it? At WWDC Apple gives you the opportunity to talk to the actual engineers who made the frameworks I am using who will answer those questions for you. And sometimes, when you are new to a particular subject being put on exactly the right track can save you a lot of time.
Networking, parties, et cetera: Some people say the opportunity to network is the most important of a WWDC. Although net working can be fun and very useful, I think at WWDC it is overrated. Most parties, and there a plenty, are just not that good. Depending on what you are looking for however there can be some great events to pick. Preparation can help.
Keynote and other fun events: For those Apple fans who are not developers the keynote would probably the highlight of the event. A lot of developers skip the keynote however, they do not want to wake up early to wait in line a few hours to see the real Steve Jobs. Others love it. I love Stump the experts, usually at Tuesday night, sort of a game show were the audience takes on the experts on stage (current and former Apple employees). In turn they ask each other questions about anything Apple related. To answer a question, everything (internet, calling Steve Jobs, etc) is allowed.

Want to know more? My friends at Tiny Planet Software wrote a pretty good post about it: Getting the most out of WWDC. It is two years old already, but still valid. If you can read Dutch you could read my post on One More Thing also.

For me, the WWDC is always the best week of the year. :)

What will Steve Jobs say about Google at the WWDC keynote?

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 22:03:00 -0700

It seems that this years WWDC will be about iPhone/iPad development mostly. Recently more and more people are saying the Google’s Android is the only big competitor to Apple’s iPhone OS. Some people are even saying Android market share is already bigger than Apple’s. What will Steve Jobs say about that in his keynote that starts the WWDC on June 7? How will Apple keep ahead of Google?

This is a summary of a blog post I wrote for One More Thing. If you can read Dutch, check out the extended version of this post at:

http://www.onemorething.nl/2010/06/keynote-vooruitblik-steve-vs-google/

Here is what Steve will do:

He will say that Apple has created the best platform ever. The platform that is the most technically advanced, has the best App Store, etc.

Steve will show some pretty interesting statistics about sales, market share and browser market share. He usually has some of this stuff at the beginning of a keynote. Sure these stats will show Apple’s superiority.

Steve will say something about iAd, Apple’s new advertising platform. This is what Steve had to say about Google and Android:

We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake: Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.

Well, Google’s business is actually selling ads. Apple is now officially moving into Google’s business. As a developer I it would be nice to be able to make a little extra money.

Here is what Apple may do:

They may start allowing more mobile operators, particularly Verizon, to carry the iPhone.

They may lower the price of the iPhone.

We will see. If Apple does not lower the price of the iPhone and/or does not expand its market share by starting to sell an iPhone that will work on Verizon’s network there is one simple conclusion: Apple is doing way better than some people want us to believe they do. That would be nice.

I was born in Holland. It is a flat country. Picture taken in...

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:38:00 -0700

I was born in Holland. It is a flat country.

Picture taken in Tiengemeten, Netherlands.