Tag Archives: developers

TestFlight: iOS Beta Testing on the Fly

Feb 23, 2011 by Matt | Posted in Services and Tools No Comments

If you’ve ever tried a little iPhone development out, you might have run into an inconvenient problem. Apple uses a code signing system on iOS devices to ensure that software that ends up on them has either passed through the App Store (and has thus been checked for malware-like behavior) or has been assigned to the unique device ID using an ad-hoc distribution. This is generally good for the end user, but it’s a real pain to distribute betas.

Enter TestFlight.

I’m not sure how it does it, but TestFlight takes the pain out of iOS beta distribution. You just build an app, upload it, enter some email addresses, and TestFlight magically takes care of the rest.

When a beta tester gets an email from TestFlight, they register their device by logging into the TestFlight website on their iOS device. It installs a provisioning profile over the air, and lets them access your uploaded application builds in the same way.

However it does its magic, TestFlight is an indispensable tool for developers.

Support Freeware Developers With #DonateFriday

Oct 8, 2009 by Matt | Posted in WordPress No Comments

If you’ve been using Twitter for any length of time, you’ve likely run into the phenomenon known as “Follow Friday,” where people tweet a list of users worth following, along with a #followfriday hashtag.

In the past few months something new and interesting started up: Donate Friday. The idea is you’re probably using several free WordPress plugins that take someone’s time and effort to develop. So on Donate Friday you pick one, donate any sum of money, however much you think the plugin is worth to you, and then you tweet about it with the #donatefriday hashtag.

The original post about Donate Friday suggested doing this not only for plugin developers, but theme creators, or anyone else contributing to the WordPress community.

Why not take it a little further? WordPress isn’t the only conglomeration of freeware developers. You probably use some free software (GPL or otherwise) every day that you find essential. Why not give them a little too? You could send a few dollars along to the people behind CyberDuck, Ubuntu, whatever software you like. Pick one every week or two and send them a (non-Starbucks) coffee.