Untropy

I recently started reading a great book, Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely. In it, he describes some psychological reasoning behind why people don't seem to behave as they think they would. For example, what marketing people do to make products seem more appealing or trustworthy. I won't say much more, except to read it! Oh, and that I took some advice from the book. Chapter 8 (Keeping Doors Open: Why Options Distract Us from Our Main Objective) talks about the effects on a person when they keep their options open, and how that can actually detract from their ability to complete a task, or make good choices. For the past three years, I have been planning this web project but also many other tasks simultaneously. Trying to do so many things at once makes it impossible to finish anything at all. And, new and interesting concepts and ideas are always appearing. So, in order to avoid the cycle of FAIL, I'm halting all other projects until I have something to show for my first post-graduate idea. Then, I may reconsider getting back to the other things. As such, this site won't be getting any significant updates besides chronicling my progress. Maybe once it's done, I will re-design the site using my own template(s).

A lot has been going on the past few weeks, and that hasn't left much time for writing substantial content here. But, here's an attempt to catch up. I have been working on Cocoa stuff, the project, (some games), and more stuff on the site. This is, of course, in the midst of normal work and life stuff. How much can I get done during my vacation? We'll see. Read more for details.

Google released Google Earth for the iPhone today. After playing around with it a bit, I'm impressed and I'm not alone. For those who like this app on the desktop, you'll find the this one a comforting addition to the app store. In addition to the maps and terrain views, Google also includes a mini browser which is used to load the images and wikipedia icons on the views. Quite handy, since iPhone / iPod Touch apps are single-tasking and you'd have to reload the whole thing after viewing one of those links. But, with android out, why would they release something like this for the iPhone?

Apple released their quarterly sales data yesterday, and the news was good. To summarize, everything is up. But, let's look at a few more finer details:

• Macs are up 21% unit-wise, and 17% revenue-wise
• iPods (all types) are up 8%, and 3% revenue-wise
• over 6.8 million iPhones were sold in the last quarter

A lot better than some others have predicted. Why? Read more to continue.

Looks like I have a long way to go... (Step 1 completed)

• The iPhone Development Story