Yearly Archives: 2010

iPhone Application Development For Dummies

Have you ever wanted to learn how to write your own iPhone applications? It’s certainly more difficult than web development, but the device is a good platform to learn client-side programming with. Mobile applications that tie into web services are becoming increasingly common, so now is a good time to give it a try.

iPhone Application Development For Dummies is a good primer on building applications for the iPhone or iPod Touch. It covers the basic theory over the first few chapters, and then moves on to building a simple View-based application. I haven’t finished the book quite yet, as I’m working my way through the tutorials as I read, but the book seems to cover all of the basics quite well. There are parts on data storage, input events, and many other things that are critical to iPhone development.

I’m finding the book to be a bit challenging, as I don’t have any real desktop programming experience, other than BASIC if that counts. I don’t think I’d recommend it to someone who doesn’t have a strong grasp of at least one programming language with a C-style syntax, such as PHP or Java. Knowledge of object-oriented programming is important, in addition to more basic skills such as dealing with variables and control structures. If you’re a total programming newbie, I would recommend reading a good introductory book first, and then moving on to iPhone Application Development for Dummies.

I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read of the book so far, and I hope that, by the time I’m done, I’ll have a good enough grasp of things to develop an idea I’ve had for awhile into an app.

Twitter Changing API URLs

Twitter is beginning the long process of changing their API root URLs from twitter.com/ to api.twitter.com/1/. This isn’t of much interest to ordinary Twitter users, but developers will need to update their applications sometime in the coming months. The old URLs will continue to…

Custom Post CSS Styles in WordPress

I’ve always thought it was a neat idea to be able to apply custom CSS stylings to different posts on a blog, allowing you to make subtle tweaks to the overall design on a case-by-case basis. A post about an upcoming movie could have…

BlogBuzz February 20, 2010

30 Gorgeous iPhone App Interfaces & Icons

If you want to see some amazingly creative user interfaces, look no further than the iPhone. iPhone AppStorm has rounded up 30 iPhone apps with interesting interfaces and icons, providing you with some good inspiration for your web/iPhone/etc design needs. They have the usual…

“WooNav” to be Integrated in WordPress 3.0

A few weeks ago, WooThemes introduced their WooNav widget-based navigation manager. In an unexpected turn of events, the theme developer has allowed it to be incorporated into the next major WordPress release, version 3.0. We are excited that we can give something substantial back…

YOURLS: Your Own URL Shortener

I have been noticing an interesting trend on Twitter and other social media sites. Larger online publications are starting to set up their own private URL shorteners for their content. Ars Technica has arst.ch, TechCrunch has tcrn.ch, and Oneforty has 14t.me, for example. Oh,…

Automated Website Thumbnails via WordPress.com

Ben Gillbanks has unearthed a neat, undocumented API. If you have a look at his WPVote site, you’ll note that next to each link there is a thumbnail or the originating site. There are several services that can generate thumbnails like that, but most…

Working with RESTful Services in CodeIgniter

The modern web is full of APIs. Many interesting sites have been created by mashing up data sources from multiple “Web 2.0″ sites. Net.Tuts+ has a new tutorial on Working with RESTful Services in CodeIgniter. I found it to be quite an interesting read,…

BlogBuzz February 13, 2009