Latest Stuff

Via Daring Fireball, a pretty depressing tale from Garrett Murray, developer of a stats app for the iPhone.

Irsquo;m far more likely to get 15 one-star reviews when something goes wrong than I am to get 15 five-star reviews when everything goes right. Perhaps itrsquo;s just frustration speaking here, but when Apple ties my hands behind my back and lets users punch me publicly in the face without allowing me to at least respond back, itrsquo;s hard to get excited about building an app.

I sympathise, but I have to wonder how much actual attention most people pay to reviews on the App Store. The average buyer must have figured out by now that most reviews are written by homophobic twelve-year-olds on sugar highs and adjust their expectations accordingly. Furthermore, I guess one upside of the current pricing model is that it’s easier to take a risk on the app if it takes your fancy, despite clearly negative reviews.

Just confirming the advice on image formats compiled at YUIBlog. I tested CS3 and Fireworks, and Fireworks outputs an excellent 8-Bit PNG file with variable transparency for web pages.

I don’t think this information has been spread all that widely, so I’ll just do my bit to help out.

I joined up with Blip.FM a couple of weeks back, but found a dismaying number of privacy and usability landmines in the sign-up and bootstrap process. I shot off a support email to the team right away, but haven’t had a response. I reckon it’s always useful to document some of these kinds of issues in public. Or maybe I’m just a cranky sod. Not sure.

Hi guys,

I’ve just signed up but I have to admit that I find the auto-filling of DJs into my favourites is a bit pushy and unwelcome. I’m given a form to list a few favourite bands with language about how “we’ll find people who play similar music”. There’s nothing to suggest that moving to the next screen then automatically builds a recommendation list and adds it without any chance to refuse or intervene. That’s a big turn-off and is the kind of thing that makes me very inclined to delete my account right away. I recognise that you say it’s “easy to add and remove DJs at any time” but I don’t want to have to perform major weeding on my profile as my first action when using a new service. All you need to say is “add these to my profile: yes/no” and we’d be cool.

I also think that the Find Friends page needs to make it incredibly, indelibly clear that NOTHING WILL BE SENT to any users that I locate unless very explicitly permitted.

Sitepoint’s 5-for-1 sale, with all proceeds going to support the bush fire relief effort in Victoria, Australia.

An exceptionally worthy cause, but it only runs until Friday the 13th of February, 2009. Help out now!