Rabidgremlin’s Soapbox

I started building my first Firefox extension last night and as a result I had to dig into XUL (pronounced zool, al la Ghostbusters).
XUL is the “XML User Interface Language” and is technology of the cross-platform GUI used by Mozilla products such as Firefox and Thunderbird.
Now I have been aware of XUL for years but [...]

So I’d thought I’d give Google’s Friend Connect a whirl. Friend Connect allows you to embed social networking components onto your website. Out of the box you get a members gadget, a wall gadget and a review/rate gadget. Since it is all based on OpenSocial you can add any other OpenSocial gadgets to your site [...]

Well things seem to be heating up in the Android world…
First off the new version of the SDK (0.9) became available. The APIs have undergone some rather radical changes since m15 but apparently they should be mostly stable now. Its going to take some serious work to get Bubbles! up and running again.
Next all sorts [...]

Here are the slides for a quick presentation I gave on Bubbles! Shamelessly pulled content and images from various sources on the web.

Click to see next slide
Here is the PDF: Bubbles! and Google Android Presentation

Just for kicks I decided to port the backend services for my Google Android app, Bubbles!,  to use the Google App Engine.
For those of you who don’t know Googles App Engine is a “free” application hosting environment. It promises to be able to scale Google style (as long as you pay of course).
The free account [...]

Why do I always look so silly in photographs ? Sigh…..
The link: Awards’ finalists air innovative use of IT

So Google has released the judge’s scoring for the Android applications.
Bubbles! was in the top 25% in all categories (Effective Use, Polish, Indispensability, and Originality) and in the top 25% overall.
This website pulls together some of the scores that have been publicly published.
The 50 first round winners have also been release and there is a [...]

Just received an email from the Android Developer Challenge team, seems that Bubbles! my Google Android application didn’t make it into round two:
During the past few weeks, 100+ judges around the world reviewed over 1,700
applications. They were extremely impressed with the diversity and the
large number of high quality entries submitted. It is clear [...]

Well working into the wee hours of the morning I finally finished off my Google Android Developer Challenge entry.
Bubbles! allows you to create a pop (point of presence) that is ‘broadcasted’ from your phone. Other Bubbles! users in close proximity (about 50m) get to see your pop and you get see theirs. Of course as [...]

This is pretty cool. For the last 3 years I’ve been working as the architect with the Innovations and Ventures department at Air New Zealand.
Yesterday we found out that three of our projects are finalists in the TUANZ Business Internet Awards for 2007 !
The projects are:
Grabaseat (Advertising & Marketing category)
For those of you who [...]