bshirley

McDonald’s is a Blight

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There was a brief story in the Houston Press about all the broken McDonald’s signs in Houston.

broken_mcdonaldsThere is an annoyed citizen that has taken his grip to the newest town square: Facebook. He created a Facebook Group to help people voice their shared annoyance.

I joined the group on Wednesday as the 34th member. I suspect if the group gets traction it should be over 1000 people in no time. And if other media in town mention it, it could go well above that.  (Or, if it goes no further than here, it could peak at 35 some time next week.)

I think if it gets noisy enough, we could likely get the Houston City Council to do something about it.

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Store Kit: Micro Payments

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When Apple announced their iPhone 3.0 software, they announced an API‡ called StoreKit. This is a small collection of interfaces to facilitate purchases via Apple. It is, of course, still subject to the 30% cut by Apple – they are about to become even richer on the App Store. (Since they are not providing hosting … Read more

Sausage Making: HB1062? nee, HB2094

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I previously emailed Rep. Farrar about House Bill 1062. She pushed for similar legislation two years ago, and got stomped by the distributers lobby. She left a comment hinting she was going to introduce a more feasible bill, but didn’t offer the details. I ran into Brock Wagner soon thereafter. He had just met with … Read more

Palm Pre(mature)

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Do you remember when Apple announced its iPhone?  It had to file with the FCC, so it was going to become public 6-months in advance.  They pre-announced to keep control of their message.  They held a lot of cards to their vest, and it wasn’t really clear what functionality was actually available until the summer … Read more

Got a Job: FlipSide5

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I recently left my internal enterprise programming position at ambulance manufacturer Frazer, located in southwest Houston. I am now currently working with FlipSide5 on iPhone application development. Two of the main guys there are old NeXTstep programmers I worked with at FannieMae in the mid 90s and in a software development tools company, Inline Software, … Read more