So, is Android using the Linux scheduler? Can I patch it?
These last few days, the Linux world has paid quite a lot of attention to this kernel patch, written by Mike Galbraith.Its purpose is to make your desktop more responsive by grouping your tasks so that they have a better chance at getting their fair share of CPU time when some other task, notably a CPU hog, is running in the background. Lennart Poettering then offered his own solution, which requires no tweak of the kernel itself.
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Android: Create a "lite" version of your application
Like many Android developers, I recently realized that pushing a “lite” version of my application to the Android Marketplace would improve my application’s visibility.
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Update your XAMPP PHP and keep Mediawiki & Drupal happy
Once again, the – otherwise very nice, I’m sure – PHP people have done this thing that has made me miserable with my own open-source code and is now also affecting Mediawiki: in PHP 5.3.1, references passed to __call() are silently turned into values.Apparently, this bug was fixed but a contract was broken in the process: even if packages such as Wikipedia or Drupal were wrong in the way they were passing references, this used to work. Now, when running the same code, not only is a warning issued – good – but the function is not called. The latter is quite hard to justify.Of course, this means that a simple “dot” upgrade can render your whole website unusable; it’s a pill that’s a tad hard to swallow.
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SuggestEditText: Android auto-suggest component
My first Android application, SplitAndTip, makes splitting a restaurant check with your friends very easy.One of its key features is that I wanted the user to be able to change any parameter without feeling like the program gets in their way. For instance, you can open the ‘Tax & Tip’ drawer and quickly change these values.However, like many, I live and work at the edge of a couple counties and the county tax goes from 8.25% to a whopping 9.75% (L.A. County of course!)It is a tedious proposition to re-enter the same two percentages every time I cross the “border.”On a desktop computer, this is usually addressed through the use of a drop-down list. However the Android UI does not have room for a full-size selection component, unless you add more steps by popping one up every time you wish to adjust a value. This is no friendly user interface.The solution I found is a text field that will provide suggestions based on past values, while remaining in the text field itself.
Read moreJailbroken iPhones now safer?
I was reading this article and, in my opinion, it got the facts right but their conclusion is backwards:Meanwhile, whilst this particular unlock is the simplest, it also carries with it element of risk that you’re going to want to protect yourself against.
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Make your iPhone 3G faster with iOS4 (some assembly required)
Today, I am venturing outside my usual programming and open-source path and I am going to share my experience speeding up my iPhone with you.I am not going to write a long article where I copy/paste what everybody else has already written about how slow iPhone 3G’s can get when running iOS4. It is now a well established fact.Rumor has it, iOS4.1 should really make your iPhone faster.
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WordPress, Thesis, GPL: The Facts Are Simple
Update:Now a few days later, Thesis has been GPL’d and there isn’t much left to say on this topic. However, for the sake of clarity, I would like to revisit a statement I made below: if Thesis contained no original WordPress code, considering that it is distributed on its own, and not shipped with a copy of WordPress, I am not sure how a court would see this. It is the intent of the GPL license that anything “linked” against GPL code becomes de facto GPL (if the executable and GPL code “make function calls to each other and share data structures”) but I am not aware of a case where “linking” was the only, successfully argued point.
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Page-Theme v1.3: Not just for pages anymore...
I am happy to announce the release of the Wordpress plugin “Page-Theme” v1.3.This version is a full rewrite.
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Freebie: A real blog editing tool
Until now, this freebie has been known only to my Twitter followers, but considering the positive feedback it received, I am going to put it out there for everybody: a few months ago, being disappointed with the lack of true rich-text editing provided by typical blog editing tools, I started work on mine.
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Twitterified no more
When you play with an 800-pound gorilla, sometimes, you have to accept that the gorilla will inadvertently stomp on you. After a couple months spent researching a possible strategic realignment, we have decided that it would not be reasonable to spend more time and money on Twitterified, at least not in its current incarnation.On April 4th 2010, Fred Wilson, who is on Twitter’s board of directors, sent a very clear message to application developers: stop writing applications that “fill holes in the Twitter product.“Emphasizing his point, Twitter quickly went on to buy Tweetie and declaring it its official client.
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