Wow, it's been quite a day. I knew when developing the Bailout Watch iPhone application that it had the potential to strike a chord, but today was the day that chord was officially struck. I appeared on the Fox & Friends television show this morning to talk about the app, and the response in the few hours since has been pretty remarkable. Politics aside, there are apparently quite a few people who like the idea of becoming more informed about how and where our tax money is being spent, and who also think a mobile device is a cool medium to do it. Here's the Fox & Friends segment:

I think it's worth explaining that I don't see the Bailout Watch app as a political tool, even though some people will inevitably choose to view it in that light. Our current financial struggles, along with the attempted remedies explored by the app, were created by both political parties. Sure, there are pieces and parts that were pushed by each party, but Washington as a whole hoisted the bailout upon us. I only bring this up because I would caution you to approach the problem of the bailout, and any solution that may follow, in philosophical terms, not political terms. Not because I'm defending one party or another but because it's simply unproductive. This is an American problem - one way or another, let's act together as Americans to figure out a way to solve it. And my first recommendation is to start at home - we could all do a better job of being more independent and resourceful; i.e. less personal debt, less over-consumption, more responsibility, and more accountability...to ourselves. Only when we've truly set this example as individuals and families can we honestly expect more out of our elected leaders.

If you'd like to learn more about the Bailout Watch app: http://www.bailout-watch.com/.

Like many of you, I can't help but be amazed at the economic state of the U.S., and perhaps more to the point, the measures being attempted to cure it. Back when the first bailout money was given out in the fall, I tried to find out how much, who was getting it, etc., and quickly realized that it's no small feat keeping up with it all. And since then, it's only gotten more complex. Not only that, but there are huge chunks of bailout money that fall outside of the TARP, for example, that get almost no attention from the mainstream media.
With all this in mind, I set out to demystify the bailout as much as possible. The end result is an iPhone application called Bailout Watch that tracks every dollar, showing exactly who got each pile of bailout cash. But tallying the amounts and naming names wasn't enough - I realized that the numbers are staggering, especially when held up against history. So a major part of the application provides a visual comparison of the bailout to other expensive endeavors in American history, such as the New Deal and World War II.
Finally, it occurred to me that a huge part of the public frustration with the bailout is not feeling as if you have a voice that's being heard. So I added poll questions that you can answer and then quickly get a read on what other people think about the bailout. I'll be rolling out new poll questions regularly, as well as pushing live updates of bailout data to the application.
It's your money, after all. Now you can use your iPhone to keep an eye on where it's going!

So I've ventured into the crazy world of iPhone application development. It's an incredibly cool platform for development, even if the learning curve is a bit steep. Even with a background in C/C++, Objective-C and the Cocoa API were a lot to take in all at once. At any rate, my first app is available. It's called Crowd Control, and it's a simple but fun little sound effects app you can use to sway a group of people. I have much more sophisticated apps in the works, so stay tuned.

One of the example applications in my new book, Head First PHP & MySQL, involves mining YouTube for video content and placing it in your own web pages. In the book, the application is developed to help a guy named Owen find his dog, Fang, who was abducted by aliens. So Owen builds an application called Aliens Abducted Me, that allows people to submit their own abduction stories. And it also pulls alien abduction videos from YouTube to display so that users can help Owen keep an eye out for Fang sightings.

My friend Elvis Wilson helped us put together the alien abduction videos, which are hosted on YouTube and accessible through the Aliens Abducted Me application. And there are more to come. Yes, they're very silly, but the point is to reveal how powerful it can be using someone else's content (in this case videos on YouTube) to make your own application more interesting and useful. Here's one of the videos:

Wow, what a beast of a book! And I mean that in the most loving of ways. I signed on to co-author this book nearly one calendar year ago (about three mental years!), and it grew to nearly take over my life as the difficulties of executing a Head First treatment of two loosely connected technologies revealed themselves. Sure, PHP and MySQL are tightly integrated in a technical sense, which is a very good thing. But Head First books aren't just technical books, they're conceptual books, and server-side scripting is conceptually a whole different animal than web databases.

It's done now, and will be shipping by the end of this month, December '08. And it works. Maybe it won't work for everyone. But I think it will do what no book has done yet in teaching you how to do interesting and powerful things with PHP and MySQL, while at the same time learning best practices about web application development in general. This is not an A-Z book on the PHP language or MySQL syntax, so look elsewhere if that's what you want. This book is an immersive experience where you are dropped into several real world (OK, maybe slightly bizarro world) scenarios that require a heavy and creative dose of PHP and MySQL to resolve. The focus is never on learning topic X, but instead on solving problem X, which flows directly from a real need. That tends to be how learning works in the real world - few of us have the luxury to learn purely for learning's sake.

I sincerely hope you check out the book and it helps you to learn not one, but two extremely handy web technologies. And after you build that killer new PHP/MySQL web app, post it up on here or Head First Labs so you can get some much deserved "nerd street cred."