Up On the Roof…

I’m a weather geek, but not to the point of having the Weather Channel keyed in as a favorite on my cable box. Yes, I did have it on Sunday morning as Hurricane Irene was above us here in NY, but hadn’t tuned into it before then since…, well I can’t remember when?

One of my geeky obsession, is to occasionally check the Read Full Post

Maybe football fans should just consider themselves lucky that there’s going to be pro football played at all this year. The chance to watch football on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch hasn’t improved all that much. Same goes for listening to radio simulcasts.

It’s been almost a year since I posted about the lack of a decent app for NFL Football. I contrasted that with what the MLB’s done with their At Bat 2010 and now At Bat 2011 apps.

Not much has changed at this point, mid-way through pre-season 2011.

If you happen to be a dish customer (only ~15% of us are), DirecTV offers NFL Sunday Ticket on iTunes. They have free apps for iPhone or iPad, however you’ll have to subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket and pay a little extra still to get the “To-Go” version.

If you’re a cable TV customer, as mos of us are, this app does us little good.

In any case I read through the reviews and downloaded the app to see what I could get it to do, not being a directv customer. The experience was ridiculous. Look at the screenshots I encountered… Read Full Post

Version control is one of the most important, but one of the most challenging areas in the software development process. I’d liken the experience to dental work, sometimes scary, maybe painful at times, but absolutely necessary for good health and longevity.

So, after not so pleasant experiences with: no versioning at all, versioning via IM, run-ins with SVN and others, I’m glad to finally be able to put GitHub to use to see how well it works for me and people I’m coding with.

While googling for GitHub and Mac, I was pointed to a great resource. It’s a video by the GitHub people recorded at Yahoo! Developer Network a few years back, entitled “Git, GitHub and Social Coding” Read Full Post

I’m trying to figure out what the National Football League’s (NFL) strategy is with their iPhone app?  The reviews are not pretty. As I look at the iTunes page now, there’s not one review that rates more than a star. The written reviews are even worse and I’m sure many who gave one star were trying to figure out if Apple would allow no stars or negative stars.

Fortunately for the NFL, iTunes doesn’t let me copy and paste, but they’re along the lines of “Shame on you, NFL,” “Worst sports app,” “Fails to deliver,” “Fire the developers.” I could keep going.

I wonder what’s happening behind the scenes? At NFL headquarters? Around the conference table when they’re discussing the strategy, features, marketing of this app? Read Full Post

It turns out that the air marshals (all of them in total) have arrested an average of 4.2 people per year since 2001, and ironically, more of these air marshals have been arrested themselves, than the total arrests they’ve made.

Again to restate, the whole air marshal system resulted in 4.2 arrests per year. That’s not 4.2 arrests per individual air marshal–the whole system.

Then to learn that more of them get locked up for misdemeanors and felonies alike, at a rate faster than they are locking terrorists or intoxicated passengers, is stunning.

Considering we spend around $200 MILLION DOLLARS PER ARREST MADE, its certainly worth reexamining.

Check out Schneier on Security and Congressman Duncan’s site for more info…