Blog
News and views on current projects, technology and things that interest me.
Web hosting, online services and the VPS
Apr 27, 2011
I use a smattering of online services to host and run my own websites, internal systems and applications. As I've recently found myself advising friends and clients alike on hosting solutions, it seems an appropriate time to write about the services I use and why I've made those choices.
My online hosting requirements fell into three broad categories: websites, email and development systems. I decided to use a mix of the Google App Engine, Google Apps and a Linode VPS.
Web Hosting
I've used shared hosting for many years to put (mostly static) websites online. As my requirements changed, shared hosting seemed to become increasingly expensive for something that can offer unreliable performance and a very limited set of features. As soon as a database was required, it became more and more obvious that I'd outgrown this type of hosting.
The alternatives to shared hosting seemed to be even more expensive: both in terms
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Charity
Mar 17, 2011
Over the past few years, there has been a trend among independent software developers and small indie studios towards supporting the work of charitable organisations through special promotions or direct donations. Promotions such as the Humble Bundles have seen developers donate some or all of their proceeds to charity while spreading the word about their software.
This year, I have decided to be a part of this trend. I will be donating 25% of my iOS software development proceeds during March to Comic Relief. I will also be attending NSScotland later this year, where attendance fees are directly donated to Developers Against Poverty.
I'm pleased to see and be a small part of this apparent movement within the independent developer community and hope to participate
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iPhone 4: First Impressions
Jun 24, 2010
I'm just back from the O2 shop at Ocean Terminal with a shiny new iPhone 4 and thought I'd jot down a few impressions of the device:
- The screen is absolutely stunning. I've never seen a display as crisp as this thing and I certainly can't pick out individual pixels without holding it up to my face and peering into the screen. Whether that says more about my eyesight than the actual hardware remains to be seen, but I'm not disappointed. Text is astoundingly sharp on web pages and in iBooks. The little app icons inside folders are clearly identifiable now too.
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It's fast. Paging through home screens and launching apps is a complete joy compared with my aging launch-day 3G. The initial restore from backup and sync process in iTunes was significantly faster too (highly refreshing after dealing with the slow fortnightly restores during the iOS4 betas). It remains to be seen just how this s
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The Student for iPhone is now available!
Feb 21, 2010
It’s been no secret among those of you who know me or follow my tweets that I’ve been working on an iPhone application for the University of Edinburgh’s award winning newspaper, The Student. As of earlier this week, the app is now available from the App Store.
The project initially started in late 2009 when Neil Pooran, one of the paper’s News editors, came to me with the idea of developing an iPhone application for accessing The Student’s content. We talked about it briefly and, thinking this would be pretty cool, I decided to take on the project. I offered up my development time free of charge, and work soon began on designing the application’s user interface and features.
Over a couple of meetings and after looking at the plethora of other newspapers on the App Store, we decided on the most important features and
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Why you should be excited about the iPad.
Jan 31, 2010
Just in case you’ve been hiding under a rock since Wednesday, Apple unveiled their newest product, the iPad, with words like “magical”, “revolutionary” and “unbelievable”. The product is a tablet computing device with a 9.7” multi-touch display. With the exception of the Apple-designed A4 processor, this is standard issue Apple hardware: aluminium and glass case, built-in wireless networking, non-removable battery, 30-pin dock connector, etc, etc.
The unveiling was met with (the usual) cries of anguish from bloggers and the technology press. “It’s just an oversized iPod touch," they squeal. “It can’t multitask," they moan. One reporter for the Daily Mail, despite never having actually personally seen or used the device, labelled it the “iPointless” in a scathing and poorly informed style that we’d never expect from such a bastion of journalistic integrity. Never before have I seen quite so many jokes about women’s hygiene products. Of course, the bl
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