My 7 fav free apps for Apple’s iTouch
Recently got a free iTouch after finally purchasing my Mac Book Pro under the “Back To School” Promo which will end on 16 Sep 08.
So i checked out the app store for any free apps/games and noticed i needed to purchase the iPhone upgrade for iTouch at USD 9.95. Well, didn’t came across as too expensive, so purchased i did and downloaded the following FREE apps/games.
- Twitterific (Category: Social Networking). I twit some garbage collections here by the way.
- Airport Status (Category: Travel) – To check airport statuses.
- Talking Spanish, Italian, French (Category: Travel) – In case i sign for Real Madrid or AC Milan.
- GPS Tracker (Category: Navigation) – Well, i am an infantry company scout during reservist. So…
- Free Hangman (Category: Games(Free) ) – The only worth-while free game.
- Remote Desktop Lite (Category: Business) – Provider access to a PC running, woohoo, Windows XP.
- Checklist (Category: Productivity) – Think “Get Things Done(GTD)”
Now my iTouch is packed with apps, the default ones + the downloaded ones, and they flows to 2 screens (1 screen can only contain 16 apps). So i placed all the important apps on the 1st screen, naturally.
Worth the USD 10 bucks? Probably. Do note that the installation took 30 minutes and just a handful of clicks, the rest are magic. Bonito!(Spanish) Buono!(Italian) Beau!(French)
Anyone has other good recommendations? Non-Free or Free.
Combining Agile Methodologies – XP and Scrum
Since XP is more focused on development practices(engineering), while Scrum more towards project organization(management), it seems possible to combine this 2 methodologies.
Having experience both agile methodologies separately, here’s my take on the must-haves.
- Planning
- Daily Standup(XP/Scrum) – What you done yesterday, going to do today, obstacles if any.
- Break down requirements into user stories (XP), then put them into a product backlog using excel or web tools like acunote (Scrum)
- Physical task-board for easy and quick viewing of sprint tasks
- Coding
- Test Driven Development(TDD) by writing the unit tests first. (XP/Scrum)
- No one owns any particular code. All code can be changed by anyone. And codes are integrated often. Thus a source control system(CVS, SVN, VSS, etc) have to be in place. (XP)
- Testing
- All code must be tested before putting to production. (XP)
- When bugs are found, new unit tests are written to guard against repeats. (XP)
- Releasing
- Have a demo before release and review after release. (Scrum)
- Release early, release often as they say. (XP). Preferably keep a sprint within weeks rather than months.
Interesting Differences.
- XP prefers having no overtime anytime, anyday, while scrum prefers no rest within a sprint, which probably means no off days and leave, unless urgent, for a good 3-4 weeks.
Summary
Majority of the coding and testing rules come from XP, while planning rules come from SCRUM. The key is to keep the rules flexible. Sprint reviews after each sprint allows you to better fine-tune your rules, based on team strength/weakness or project nature. Well, as long as they work for you.
Free Scrum/XP E-book
Codepad. Run code snippets online.
Just discovered an online tool that allows me to run code snippets in many languages such as php, python, ruby, haskell, lua and many else. (See all http://codepad.org). Sure you can use irb for ruby, etc, provide you’ve install them on your box.
The results of code run are also available via a URL (Check out my ruby snippet. )
Well if someone doubts your code and is lazy to go over your desk when you argue that it works on your machine(yeah, it “always works” locally). Just send them that code result URL !
Battle of the Property Search Engines – PropertyGuru vs iProperty
User Friendliness – Age of Web 2.0
Seems that it’s harder to choose the districts from iProperty.com.sg as users have to reference the map to know the district they are interested in. Propertyguru.com.sg does a better job at that.
Do you prefer to remember numbers or words? Ala, http://72.14.207.104/ or http://google.com ?
PropertyGuru.com.sg 1 : iProperty.com.sg 0
Ajax App Server? – AjaxToaster
“AjaxToaster is an Ajax application server which makes it easy to create RESTful web services for rich web client applications. It runs under any of the main Java servlet containers (tomcat/glassfish/websphere/jboss/jetty)”
Still in RC though. I haven’t managed to take a closer look, but the request/update urls doesn’t look too restful to me.
http://localhost:8080/toaster?service=recipe/RetrieveAll&returnjson
http://localhost:8080/toaster?service=meetings/UpdateMeetingRoom&inputjson={"Room":[{"RoomCode":"AZALEA","RoomName":"The Azalea Room"}
Hmm, not too sure anyone had a go at this project.
Photoshop tutorials that will have you producing cool product advertisements
Always had a hidden designer flair in you despite being a software programmer?
Checkout 15 photoshop tutorials that will have you churning out quality product ads as fast as you churning code
Simple load testing using http_load
Found a simple load testing tool called http_load that can be used to test the throughput of your website.
Basically after downloading the tar file and doing a “make”, the executable http_load will be available. Create a file(i call it “urls”) to list down the urls that you want to test. Then run this command,
./http_load -rate 5 -seconds 10 urls | grep msecs/connect
Output: msecs/connect: 15.9684 mean, 46.466 max, 9.378 mi
I believe monit can also monitor remote hosts, but http_load is a quick way to do so with an easy setup in 1 minute.
