Michael's Blog

Bailout Watch Breaks Out

michael — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:39:04 -0600

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:

Bailout Watch Breaks Out

michael — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:39:04 -0600

Bailout Watch iPhone App

michael — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:04:12 -0600

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.

Crowd Control iPhone App

michael — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:37:30 -0700

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.

Alien Abductions on YouTube

michael — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:33:26 -0700

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.