Monthly Archives: April 2011

Businesses in Cahoots

Businesses will create joint ventures to improve products and market penetration.

A nearby town has a pair of businesses, side-by-side, that together inspire laughs or dread.
So what to think… Coincidence? Or a shady partnership?? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

(I saw this in-person years ago but couldn’t successfully get a digital camera photo, so this is from google Street View.)

Two businesses that no-one would want to see partnered together.

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Tablet screens: Playbook vs Galaxy Tab vs iPad

This is just a bit of technical numbers trivia.
I made these calculations to have a reference for comparing things.

Platform

BlackBerry
Playbook

Samsung
Galaxy Tab
Apple
iPad
Resolution
(pixels)
1024 x 600
1024 x 600
1024 x 768
Diagonal size
(pixels)
1186 diag
1186 diag
1280 diag
Diagonal size
(inches)
7"
7"
9.7"

pixels-per-inch
(dots per inch)

169 ppi/dpi
169 ppi/dpi
132ppi/dpi
App icon width (pixels)
90px
(90 x 90)
72px
(72 x 72)
72px
(72 x 72)
(divided by ppi)
169 ppi
169 ppi
132 ppi
App icon width
(inches)
0.53"
0.43"
0.55"
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A funny musical instrument

From DailyMotion.comThis is an instrument that is used in serious music productions, but funny by itself, makes me laugh out loud.

It’s known as a jaw harp, or Jew’s harp, or juice harp, or mouth harp, or ozark harp, or trump, or guimbarde. Yes, that many (probably more) various names for the instrument.

So how can it be taken seriously with so many names? How can it be taken seriously when it sounds so funny and is played basically by making a “twang-a-lang” sound inside your mouth?

But it makes for a good laugh. Oh, and I’ve personally owned a jaw harp for at least 15-20 years. But I gave up learning because I didn’t know how it was supposed to be played… sheesh.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4qre7_solo-de-guimbarde_music

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Useful content vs entertaining content

There is a great conversation in the movie Morning Glory. It is a quick debate about the quality and value of news and information.
Are cold-hard facts more important than candy-coated trivia?

I’m considering a reorganization of this blog, and conversion into more of a discreet page format, rather than a huge blog page greeting any visitor.

First up: Converting the “About” page to a “Contact” page.

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BlackBerry vs iPhone (iOS): the fundamental UI “view”

Here’s some info for developers… Not so useful for a regular app user.  This will be an updated document/post!

There are usually counterparts in competitive things. Blackberry’s OS and iOS and Android, they all have common things that are simply changed a bit, most frequently by name, but maintaining a common set of traits, as I’m going to begin describing. There is much too much documentation on various things to do a comprehensive common comparison, unless I were getting paid to do such an article by someone who wanted it (which I’m open to doing for the right price!). The purpose of constructing this is to give a platform to launch a person into their own research and discovery.

The basic foundational user-interface concepts are what you see, and what you do with it.
The foundational “what you see” element is generally called the “view”. In iOS, this is called UIView and in BlackBerry, it is called Field. For the record, in Google Android, it is called View.
Temporary note: this is comparing BB and iOS, not including Android right now.
What foundational “what you do with it” element is generally a user action. In iOS, the most basic is a UITouch (and derivatives, like UIGestureRecognizer), and in BlackBerry, I think it’s called a trackballClick. Then there are more actions a user can do, like dragging… Sorry if this is too basic, just being well-rounded.

The specific web address for the documentation of each of the view elements are:
http://www.blackberry.com/developers/docs/3.6api/net/rim/device/api/ui/Field.html
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UIView_Class/UIView/UIView.html

BB iOS
Quick description (from official docs):
A field represents a rectangular region contained by a manager. The field sizes itself according to its needs in layout. The manager, rather than the contained fields, completely handles scrolling.
Quick description (from official docs):
The UIView class defines a rectangular area on the screen and the interfaces for managing the content in that area. At runtime, a view object handles the rendering of any content in its area and also handles any interactions with that content.
.isFocusable (UIResponder)canBecomeFirstResponder
.onFocus (UIResponderDelegate) becomeFirstResponder
.onUnFocus (UIResponderDelegate) resignFirstResponder
.layout(req) layoutSubviews
.paint(req) drawView
.invalidate setNeedsDisplay
.updateLayout setNeedsLayout
.trackwheelClick (UIResponder)touchesBegan:withEvent:
.trackwheelUnclick (UIResponder)touchesEnded:withEvent:
(UIResponder)touchesCancelled:withEvent:

Manager vs UIViewController
http://www.blackberry.com/developers/docs/3.6api/net/rim/device/api/ui/Manager.html
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIViewController_Class/Reference/Reference.html

BB iOS
Quick description (from official docs):
The system uses manager objects to contain fields. The various manager subclasses handle specific kinds of field layout. This Manager class itself deals with scrolling internally.
Quick description (from official docs):
The UIViewController class provides the fundamental view-management model for iPhone applications. The basic view controller class supports the presentation of an associated view, support for managing modal views, and support for rotating views in response to device orientation changes
Relationship to Field: extended from Field class
Contains a bit of UIScrollView code for handling scrolling…
Relationship to Field: contains a UIView property ( .view)
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