Metrics in an Agile World

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/agile-metrics

uispec - Behavior Driven Development for the iPhone

UISpec is a Behavior Driven Development framework for the iPhone that provides a full automated testing solution that drives the actual iPhone UI. It is modeled after the very popular RSpec for Ruby.

To make finding specific views in the iPhone UI easy, UISpec includes a very powerful view traversal DSL called UIQuery. Not only can you easily traverse the view heirarchy, you can also interact with the views you find.

http://code.google.com/p/uispec/

Microsoft Worked With Apple And Is Bringing Us Silverlight To The iPhone, Instead Of Flash By Adobe

Microsoft demonstrated the first developer beta of Silverlight 4 at the Professional Developer’s Conference this week, nothing very exciting if it’s not that they actually demoed it running on an iPhone.

For those who don’t know about Silverlight, Wikipedia is your friend:

Microsoft Silverlight is a web application framework that provides functionalities similar to those in Adobe Flash, integrating multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single runtime environment.

What’s great about it is that thanks to Silverlight, web developers will soon be able to make their content available to iPhone owners without hassles. It’s actually pretty amazing since we’ve been awaiting this from Adobe for a while now and it seemed like Apple was just not ready to let them do it. So how did it happen ? The guys over at betanews found out:

We asked Microsoft User Experience Platform Manager Brian Goldfarb last week at PDC 2009, and the answer was a huge surprise…followed by some caveats. But it contained these four amazing words: “We worked with Apple.”

The promise of Silverlight is that it’s a cross-device, cross-browser, cross-platform solution, and it works the same on Macs as it does on Windows

Rogers/Fido Release “My Account” iPhone App

A few months ago, Rogers/Fido updated their websites to provide customers with the ability to view their wireless usage in almost real-time. The information was updated every four hours and gave users a great tool to track wireless usage.

To expand on that functionality and to set themselves apart from the other two Canadian iPhone carriers, Rogers and Fido have released new apps called “My Account”. The apps require no inputting of account credentials and simply pull everything from your iPhone network connection and SIM card.

Both Rogers and Fido each have their own version of the app and both apps provide customers with their wireless usage. Like the website, users can see minutes, messages and data usage right from their iPhone, which updates every 20 minutes instead of four hours as on the Rogers/Fido websites. The apps also allow customers to view their current balance and make a payment via credit card.

A few things to note:

1.) The apps do not support Corporate Accounts.

2.) The apps do not support Prepaid accounts.

3.) You must have a data plan with Rogers/Fido, whether contracted or not.

4.) You must be on 3G or EDGE for the apps to retrieve your account information. If you are on WiFi, you will have to turn WiFi off and connect to 3G or EDGE. (This is annoying)

5.) The app icons are really weird.

Both of the Rogers My Account and Fido My Account apps are available on the iTunes App Store for free.

What Happens to Your Online Accounts When You Die? [Social Networking]

Though maudlin to consider, it's important to think about what happens to your email and social networking accounts when you die. Will your relatives be able to gain access, or will the accounts simply fade away? That depends.
Photo by 10ch.
Weblog MakeUseOf looks into the subject, examining several of the most popular web services out there. Email services like Hotmail and Gmail allow next of kin to access accounts of deceased individuals as long as the family can provide proof of death. Other services, like MySpace, will simply delete the account upon request. Facebook will also delete an account if asked, but also goes the extra mile and turns the user's page into a memorial page if the family desires.
Hit up the post for more steps various email and social networking sites take when notified of a user's death, and read up on making post-mortem plans for your online life. Would you want access to a deceased family member's accounts, or would you rather they were just deleted? Talk about it in the comments.

Find What Happens To Your Email and Social Networking Accounts When You Die [MakeUseOf]

Kanban Kick Start

Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility

http://www.netobjectives.com/resources/books/lean-agile-software-development

Shazam Launches $4.99 iPhone App, Cripples Free Version

Shazam Entertainment has just launched a new music identifying app for the iPhone titled Shazam Encore, which is now available in the App Store for $4.99, and as a result of this, the free Shazam iPhone app has been crippled to only allow you to identify up to five songs per month.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the move to a paid version simply had to be done thanks to a slumping economy. Shazam Entertainment’s chief executive Andrew Fisher stated that the company just wasn’t making enough off of in-app advertisements and iTunes downloads to sustain its current business model.

Mr. Fisher says mobile advertising was one of the first victims of the recession, and he doesn’t expect ad rates to bounce to levels to sustain free apps for at least two years.

Fisher further backed up that statement by saying the company makes most of its money by selling the app to paying customers on other platforms or through deals with wireless carriers.

But Shazam Entertainment isn’t just limiting its free app to get customers to pay for Encore, they are also trying to sweeten the deal by adding features to the paid version. Shazam Encore contains all of the free version’s features, such as the ability to share tags through a variety of services and purchase music directly through iTunes, but it also features a new interface, many speed improvements, music recommendations, hot and popular music charts, the ability to search for music by artist, album, or track, a drive and tag mode that makes it easier to discover music while the device is docked, and, of course, unlimited song tagging.

What do you folks think? Are the new features, improved speed, and improved interface enough to get you to drop $4.99 on what could be considered a novelty app? Or are you just going to stick with the free version since you get five tags per month anyway?

YouTube XL Supersizes YouTube for Your TV [YouTube]

Many people are sporting HTPCs these days—media computers hooked up to their televisions—but some sites are designed like you're sitting at your computer desk not on your living room couch. YouTube XL makes YouTube couch-friendly.
YouTube XL presents common YouTube options in a large display format for easy navigation without having to read a tiny font 20 feet across your living room. You can quickly navigate to spotlighted, top rated, and most viewed categories. Clicking on 'More...' also gives you quick access to rising videos, most favorites, most discussed, and more.
You can also set the next video in your search results or viewing category to start playing when the current one ends and filter out content not suitable for minors. If you've been annoyed by the tiny fonts and buttons when trying to use YouTube in a living room setup, YouTube XL is a great way to access YouTube in a couch-friendly format.
Have another great site or tool for accessing streaming video on from the comfort of your living room? Let's hear about it in the comments.

YouTube XL [via AskTheAdmin]

How To: Edit Videos On Your iPhone

If you use your iPhone 3GS for taking video as much as I do, you probably have over fifty video clips in your camera roll. Most of these are clips you would like to assemble and share but apple has offered no way to edit your videos on the iPhone short of cutting the start and end of each clip. Well now, thanks to Nexvio Inc. “Theres An App For That” or more precisely, 3 apps. These apps can make your iPhone a miniature video editing studio!

ReelDirector

ReelDirector allows you to assemble your clips in your camera roll into a timeline and apply transitions and text watermarks. The developer also promises to add voiceover capabilities in a later release!

Slowmo

With Slowmo you can chose a video from your camera roll or record a video and change the speed of the clip from 8 times slower to 2 times faster. You can also chose whether you want to stretch the audio to synchronize with the video or Loop/Trim for normal pitch

ReelMoments

ReelMoments lets you take time-lapse video directly from your iPhone 3G or 3Gs. For those of you that doesn’t know what this is, the app takes pictures every few seconds and condenses it to show a fast motion video lapse of a long time period.

For best video results, users should consider use of all three apps for one video. simply save the footage you create with ReelMoments and Slowmo into your Camera Roll and load them into your ReelDirector Movie!