I've been pondering about a career goals lately with all this uprising against Flash and I've decided to throw a few new languages under my belt. Specifically, objective C and java. Can you guess what for!? Well, mobile development for the iPhone and Android platforms. I'll try to catalogue my steps to gain these new skills in my blog, but you know how that goes sometimes. I'm hoping for the best.

As of right now, I'm watching the Stanford iTunes U podcasts for iPhone Dev, watching Lynda.com videos for iPhone dev, and following along with a Beginning iPhone Dev book. So, we can say I've jumped in head first. I hoping to find a simple project for freelance or even build my own game to ramp up on practical use.

As for Android dev, I've signed up for a live web lesson for developing for the platform. Hopefully I don't forget about it.

Stay tuned folks.

-G

I found something else cool that enhances the browser experience. There was a plug-in for Firefox that can guess your geo-loacation through you wi-fi signal and BrightKite harnessed that power to add a "Guess my location" feature to their site. Here's the story strait from their blog.

So if you're interested in using Brightkite, leave a comment. First five comments get an invite so be quick!

Check out the photo stream on Flickr and have a laugh at my expense. Thats what I get for deciding to hang out at the Yoono photo shoot area most of the night and whore myself out to the camera. And dont forget to vote up the photos I'm in on the Yoono Photo Contest page.

While discussing these ideas with Tim, I had funny idea for a widget. I was thinking of an iPhone Shuffle, which would be funny to but you would need contacts in Ribbit already so I went a little further and created a random number to call. I created an array of all the US area codes and pulled one at random along with 7 other random integers. It will take a few tries before you get a good number so for a later update I'll figure out if theres a way to check the number to see if its in use or a valid number.

No style or animation yet, I just pulled code from the Ribbit code examples. I'll update it here when I add some "pizzazz." Here it is:

Gas app Created by Jeffrey Grossman
This app can get really handy with gas prices these days. Quickly find the cheapest gas in your area by inputing a zipcode. No directions yet, but still awesome.

One Trip Created by Neven Mrgan
This a simple grocery list. Super useful. I can see a lot of people using this one.

Digg App -- Created by David Cann
Everyone loves Digg most people are Digg addicts. Why not have on your iPhone!? Now you can check it continuously!

iChat App Also created by David Cann
I just dont get why Apple didnt put in a version of iChat in iPhone... woohoo my SMS Messages look like an iChat conversion. This iChat app is filling in the gaps.

iTwittr Created by Dean Robinson
Twitter is a crazy social site that lets you update what you are doing from the website, SMS, IM. Instead of using your iPhone's SMS you can use this app.

My First Mac App Created by MyFirstMac.com
View the Article of the Day, Tip of the Day, and Link of the Day. Will this be used often...eh I'd rather check out the RSS feed with the Safari browser on the iPhone.

All of these apps work in Safari, some in Firefox (sorry IE, not!). Have fun, comment if you find new ones!

My mind needs a mix...these books should mix it up nice. :-D

Note to Blog: Be prepared to be flooded with random videos.

Note to non-existant blog readers: Be prepared to be annoyed with the semi-constant flow of videos of me.

If anyone has answers please comment.

Vimeo API

Vimeo API Forum

The Story: The people Ralph Lauren decided it was time for window shopping to become more intuitive and interactive. The idea came from Ralph Lauren's son and was inspired by the computer technology in Minority Report. The input of the window shopping program is controlled by wires inbedding into the glass that desinated where a finger it. Through this program, person can shop/browse through the Ralph Lauren inventory, buy items and have them shipped to an address of their choosing.

My Opinion: Use you home computer. I have a feeling this idea is going belly up, but not right away. It seems cool to use once but once a person understands they could do the same thing from home this "window shopping" will become unused. Why would you want to stand outside the store when you could walk right in, especially in the winter? Sorry Ralph Lauren, its a good idea and I bet it was loads of fun to develop it, but its just not practical.